Ctes 

Book 

Copyright^ 

CDPYHIGHT DEPOSm 



i 

I 



THE 



LIFE AND GENIUS 



OF 



GOETHE 



LECTURES AT THE CONCORD SCHOOL 
OF PHLLOSOPHY 



EDITED BY 

F. B. SANBORN 




BOSTON 
TICKNOR AND COMPANY 
1886 



Copyright, 1885, 
By Ticknor and Company. 

All rights reserved. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



PORTRAITS. 

Goethe in Age. From Baucis Bust . . . Frontispiece, 
Goethe in Youth To face p. I 

Page 



iODUCTiON. — The Goethe Society and the Goethe 
Archives. — Bibliography of Goethe's Works, of 
Works on Goethe, and of Papers on Goethe — 

The Concord School V 

I. Goethe's Youth. Prof. H. S. White .... 1 
II. Goethe's Self-Culture. John Albee . . e . 37 
III. Goethe's Titanism. Thomas Davidson .... 68 
IY. Goethe and Schiller. Rev. 0. A. Bartol . . 107 
Y. Goethe's Marchen. Rev. F. H. Hedge . . . 135 
YI. Goethe's Relation to English Literature. 

F. B. Sanborn 157 

YII. Goethe as a Playwright. William Ordway 

Partridge 189 

[VIII. Das Ewig-Weibliche. Mrs. E. D. Cheney . . . 218 
IX. The Elective Affinities. S. H. Emery, Jr. . 251 
X. Child Life as portrayed by Goethe. Mrs. 

Caroline K. Sherman 290 



iv 



CONTENTS. 



XI. History of the Faust Poem. Denton J. Snider 313 

XII. Goethe's Women. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe . . 345 

XIII. Goethe's Faust. W. T. Harris 368 



INDEX 447 



INTRODUCTION. 



The Lectures on Goethe here printed are not the 
whole of those delivered at the School of Philosophy 
in July, 1885 ; for several of the lecturers have either 
published their essays elsewhere, or withhold them 
for other uses. Much also that was said in the con- 
versations which followed the Lectures, and which 
threw light on the text as here printed, is necessarily 
omitted ; although the lecturers, in revising their 
manuscripts, have sometimes included remarks that 
were thus made. Mr. Alcott, the founder of the 
School, although several times present during these 
sessions, (as he had not been since 1882,) was unable 
to make his comments in the conversations; and 
therefore some passages from his Diaries have been 
inserted in the lecture of Mr. Sanborn. On the 
other hand, Mr. Snider and other lecturers have 
omitted, in revision, some of the comments made in 
the spoken lectures. 

Professor Hewett, of Cornell University, whose 
lecture on " Goethe in Weimar/' expanded, will form 
part of a series on the " Homes of the German Poets " 



vi 



INTRODUCTION. 



in Harper's Magazine, and is not available for this 
volume, has kindly furnished for this Introduction an 
account of the newly discovered Goethe manuscripts 
which were mentioned in his lecture. It is based on 
the reports of Professor Geiger and Dr. Brahm, and 
is as follows. 

THE GOETHE SOCIETY AND THE GOETHE 
AECHIYES. 

Walther von Goethe, Chamberlain of the Grand Duke of 
Saxe- Weimar, and the last descendant of the poet, died in 
Leipzig, April 15, 1885. By his will he bequeathed the 
Goethe house, its art and scientific collections, to the Grand 
Duke ; its literary treasures were left to the Grand Duchess 
Sophie, a princess of the house of Orange, whose intelligence 
and interest in literature make her a worthy successor of the 
Duchess Amalia. On the 9th of June a call was issued, in- 
viting all friends of Goethe literature to unite in the formation 
of a Goethe Society in Weimar. The meeting was held on 
June 20 and 21, in the guild house of the Crossbowmen, an 
organization of which the poet was a member. More than one 
hundred eminent scholars and university professors assembled 
from all parts of Germany and Austria to do honor to the poet. 
The Goethe archives, which had been so long the object of 
ardent interest to all scholars, had at last been opened, and 
the results of the investigation were to be made known. The 
Society was constituted with a long list of active members, 
including the Empress of Germany, the granddaughter of Carl 
August, the Princes and the Grand Duchess of Saxe- Weimar, 
the Princes of Keuss-Gera, of Meiningen, and of Saxony ; the 
Ministers Yon Gossler of Berlin, Yon Gerber of Dresden, and 
numerous foreign scholars of Naples, Eome, Athens, and 
America. The Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar 



INTRODUCTION. 



vii 



accepted the office of patron of the society. Dr. Simson, Presi- 
dent of the Imperial Court of Leipzig, formerly President of 
the German Parliament, was chosen the first President. The 
Executive Committee consists of Professor W. Scherer of Berlin, 
First Yice-President ; General-Intendant Yon Loen of Weimar, 
Second Yice-President ; Professor Kuno Fischer of Heidelberg ; 
Paul Heyse, the novelist, of Munich ; Yon Loeper of Berlin ; 
Yon Beaulieu-Marconnay of Dresden; Eumelin, Chancellor 
of the University of Tubingen, of Stuttgart ; Professor Erich 
Schmidt of Yienna; Eggeling, Curator of the University of 
Jena; and Buland of Weimar. A business board was also 
selected. Herr Commerzienrath Moritz was appointed Treas- 
urer of the Society. 

The objects of the organization are to promote a knowledge 
of the whole domain of Goethe's intellectual activity and in- 
fluence, and to promote special investigations in Goethe liter- 
ature. Annual meetings will be held for the presentation of 
papers and interchange of views. The Goethe Jahrbuch will 
become the organ of the society, in which will be published 
much of the fresh material discovered in the archives. The 
volume for 1886 will contain the letters of Goethe to his sister 
Cornelia, and to Behrisch in Dessau ; also, the hitherto un- 
published letters of the Erau Path (Goethe's mother) to the 
Duchess Amalia, from the state archives, the arrangement of 
which has been entrusted to Archivrath Burkhardt. A sub- 
sequent volume will contain the letters of Goethe from Italy 
to the Frau von Stein, and also his correspondence with his 
wife. The Society will establish a Goethe museum and library, 
with facilities for investigation, and seek to complete the 
Goethe archives. 

The Grand Duchess has determined to inaugurate two 
monumental works : (1.) A complete life of Goethe, based on 
his diaries and the additional material contained among his 
papers. This has been undertaken by that most eminent 
Goethe scholar, Privy-Councillor von Loeper. (2.) A new 
authentic edition of his works, based upon the collation of all 



viii 



INTRODUCTION. 



existing manuscripts, which will devolve upon Yon Loeper, 
Scherer, and Erich Schmidt, the last of whom has resigned 
his professorship in the University of Vienna to accept the 
Directorship of the Goethe Archives. 

At a later session of the Society, Herr von Loeper and Pro- 
fessor Scherer presented the results of their examination of the 
archives. Six cases were filled with the manuscripts. One 
contained accounts of domestic expenses, the bills of butchers 
and bakers, preserved with that order which was character- 
istic of the poet ; a second contained careful notes, from the 
highest authorities, together with the results of his own obser- 
vations in science ; two other cases contained manuscripts of 
his works, journals, and letters. Yon Loeper gave a general 
view of the contents of two cases out of the six, which he had 
been able to examine. The material may be divided into 
three parts : (1.) Manuscripts of Goethe's works ; (2.) Letters ; 
and (3.) Diaries. 

I. The existing manuscripts, while not presenting new and 
complete works, reveal the methods of study of the poet, the 
vast field of his intellectual activity, and the origin, growth, 
and connection of his various writings. They begin with the 
unique copy of the " Hollenfahrt Jesu Christi," written in 
1765, and published in "Die Sichtbaren" in 1766, and end 
with his last great work, the Second Part of Faust, in 1831, 
thus covering a period of sixty-six years. Many manuscripts 
most eagerly anticipated were not found, among them the 
original of Faust. Count Friedrich Stolberg, in descrihmg a 
visit to "Weimar in 1775, speaks of a glorious afternoon when 
Goethe read " his half- completed Faust, a noble poem," to 
the Duchesses and himself. This manuscript, which Goethe 
carried with him to Italy, would settle many questions in 
Faust criticism. The preliminary sketch of " "Wilhelm Meis- 
ter," spoken of by Herder, and its earlier form, as well as 
the first version of " Tasso," are missing. Among the treasures 
revealed, however, from the pre- Weimar days, are a fine manu- 
script of " Der Ewige Jude " ; the first manuscript of " Gotz von 



INTRODUCTION. 



ix 



Berlichingen"; a hitherto unknown collection of dialogues, 
in one of which Frau Aja plays a part (October 14, 1774); 
and a volume of youthful poems, parts of which are known 
through copies in the possession of the Herders and Frau von 
Stein ; also, three versions of the " Mitschuldigen " (probably 
later revisions), and several manuscripts of "Prometheus," 
one copied by Lenz, and one by the Fraulein von Gochhausen. 
Belonging to the period of his residence in Weimar are copies 
of his minor dramatic works, among them three manuscripts 
of the " Triumph der Empfindsamkeit." 

From the period of Goethe's residence in Italy there are 
versions of the " Iphigenie " in prose and in iambics, " Tasso," 
and the " Eoman Elegies " complete, in his own autograph. 
Of later date are three autograph manuscripts of the " Vene- 
tian Epigrams," with many hitherto unpublished ; some of 
these are of an erotic nature, others were directed against 
Lavater, and still others were anti-clerical in spirit. A manu- 
script of the " Grosskophta " as an opera was also found, and 
" Elpenor " in two versions. Of the period of Goethe's con- 
nection with Schiller, there is the manuscript of " Hermann 
und Dorothea," copied probably by A. W. Schlegel, with cor- 
rections by Goethe. There are also numerous smaller works 
and fragments, — among the latter the beginning of a tragedy 
in five acts, called " Das Madchen von Oberkirch," in which 
Goethe treats the phenomena of the French Revolution. He 
located the action in the Alsatian village of Oberkirch, with 
the surroundings of which he was familiar. There is also 
a beautiful manuscript of that ambitious fragment, the 
"Achilleis," in which Goethe, filled with the spirit of his 
Homeric studies, undertook a classical epic, in continuation 
of the Iliad, but stopped with the first canto. A plan, how- 
ever, has been found, embracing the action of the six books 
originally contemplated. Goethe's enthusiasm for Homer is 
further shown by essays in the translation of various passages 
in hexameters, and even a critical interpretation of an obscure 
passage. 



X 



INTRODUCTION. 



His productivity is shown by the vast materials accumulated 
in his later studies. Among these are poems and collectanea 
for the " Divan," all in autograph, and nearly all supplied with 
dates. These exhibit various readings and rejected passages, 
and are of great value in the interpretation and historical 
criticism of the verses as they stand. He even attempted a 
" Historisches Volksbuch" (1808). Numberless minor poems 
and fragments were found, occasionally recreations of the 
charming evenings of the literary "circles," but more often 
the records of more serious work. Among them are additional 
Zahme Xenien, invectives, political stanzas, attacks on persons, 
Erotica, etc. There is an attack upon Wolfgang Menzel, 
whose bitter hostility could not always leave Goethe unmoved. 
He is called a " Potenzierter Merkel." There is also an addi- 
tion to the poem, " Es ist ein Schuss gef alien," with references 
to Friedrich Schlegel, and Miiller, the romanticist and pub- 
licist, who followed his friend to the Koman communion. 

Professor Scherer, in his investigations, gave especial atten- 
tion to the manuscripts of " Faust." He found, what cannot 
be a surprise, from Goethe's own expressions, that the poet him- 
self had attempted an adaptation of- the First Part to the stage. 
His plan for its representation included in the first act the 
Dedication, Prelude, and Prologue in Heaven. Music was 
introduced skilfully and effectively in many passages ; as in 
the abridged monologue, and in the scene of Faust's covenant 
with the evil spirit, when the choir of spirits is heard contend- 
ing with one another, " He will sign," " He will not sign," 
singing in chorus, until Mephistopheles cries, 

"Blut ist ein ganz besonder Saft." 

Goethe's taste for the opera, and his estimate of the capacity of 
music to heighten dramatic effect, are shown by this treatment. 
This scheme or arrangement is often styled in the manuscript 
" melodrama." As early as 1810, Goethe considered the pre- 
sentation of "Faust" on the stage, and requested Zelter to 
write the music for the Easter Song and the Slumber Song of 



INTRODUCTION. 



xi 



the Spirits, "Schwindet ihr dunkeln Wolbungen droben"; 
but the musician declined, and Goethe dropped the matter for 
the time. Later, he was very angry at the proposed production 
of " Faust " in Weimar in 1828, before consultation with him, 
" as though he were no longer alive, and without asking what 
view he might have in the manner of its presentation." For 
the Helena scenes there is the most abundant material, and 
there is a manuscript, " Helena im Mittelalter, ein satyrisches- 
Drama," which later bears the odd title, " Satyr- Drama, eine 
Episode zu Faust." The inference is drawn from this, that 
Goethe's earliest work on the "Helena" continued, in the 
ancient metres, until the appearance of " Faust." The results 
of this examination are in no respect complete or final. 

II. The second division includes the letters to and from 
Goethe. These cover an extended period, — from his student 
days in Leipzig to his late Weimar days. New and unexpected 
materials are here presented. Of high value in determining 
the history of Goethe's life, and his relations to his family, 
are his letters to his sister Cornelia. Strehlke, in his cata- 
logue of Goethe's letters, recently completed, says, " No 
single letter of Goethe to his sister or his father is known " ; 
but here we have a welcome collection of letters to his 
sister, the companion of his first triumph, whose loss he 
so greatly mourned. There are also letters to Behrisch in 
Dessau, the friend of his university days in Leipzig, from 
whom he parted with so much regret. There are also three 
letters written while an advocate in Frankfort, and thirty- 
eight letters to the Minister von Fritsch. The series of letters 
which will attract most attention are those to his wife, covering 
twenty-five years in an unbroken succession, from 1792 to her 
death in 1816. They are described as evincing a "constant 
ardor and sincerity of feeling, and to afford an irrefutable view 
of Goethe's domestic happiness. He communicates to her all 
the interests of his life, his poetic undertakings, visits, and 
moods, and shows a faithful interest in her domestic duties. 
He is always the kind, loving, attentive husband. Amid the 



xii 



INTRODUCTION. 



excitements of his campaign in France, lie longs for his home, 
and, for his highest happiness, wishes his dear one with him 
in Verdun." There are a hundred and eighty letters from 
Goethe's mother, in one collection, and additional letters in- 
corporated in the current correspondence of each year ; also, 
numerous letters, mostly notes, from Frau von Stein, serving 
to show the character of their later intercourse. There are 
letters of Frau von Grotthus, Frau von Eybenberg, Amalie von 
Imhof, and F. Caspers, and single remembrances from Lotte 
Buff (1798) and Lili Schonemann (1801). 

Goethe's letters from the Grand Duke Carl August are pre- 
served intact in the collection, and show how unsatisfactory 
the present edition is. This correspondence, edited by Dr. 
Vogel, was published in 1863 in an incomplete form. It had 
been withheld, owing to two expressions of Goethe, — one in 
a letter of November 17, 1787, from Eome : " Burn, I pray 
you, my letters at once, that they may be read by no one ; 
with this hope I can write more freely." Before his departure 
for Switzerland in 1797, he said: "I have burned all the 
letters sent to me since 1772, from a positive disinclination to 
the publication of the silent march of friendly intercourse.' ' 
His views afterward changed, and he published parts of his 
correspondence covering this period. The letters preserved in 
the Goethe archives show that the destruction of his corre- 
spondence was not so general as his language would imply. 
Of particular interest at the present time is the discovery of 
Carlyle's letters to the poet, and copies of Goethe's letters in 
reply. 

The Schiller correspondence suffered from the arbitrary and 
capricious suppressions of its editors, and the fourth edition 
was necessary to give it in substantial correctness. .Even in 
its present form there is much to be desired. Goethe himself 
says that letters are the most valuable memorial of a man. 
His correspondence grew with his fame ; his interest extended 
to the most varied branches of literature, art, antiquities, and 
science ; and letters from scholars, poets, and artists multiplied 



INTRODUCTION. 



xiii 



during the later period of his life. They present his relations 
to individuals, the growth of his opinions, his judgments of 
men and things, and the inception and progress of his works. 
Political events in Europe do not escape him. Discoveries, 
facts, and theories are mirrored in his all-reflecting mind ; the 
works of contemporary and past writers are estimated ; and 
thus his letters become a contribution to a knowledge of the 
literary history of his time. 

III. The third division contains Goethe's diaries. These 
begin in 1776, before the first year of his residence in Weimar 
had passed, and extend to the 16th of March, 1832, but six 
days before his death. They present a rich material for estimat- 
ing the poet's life, the existence of which was entirely unsus- 
pected. Meagre and inaccurate extracts from certain portions 
had appeared, limited in range and time ; but the originals are 
presented here entire. There is, however, a blank between 
the years 1782 and 1796, interrupted by two brief beginnings 
in 1791 and 1793. These journals are at first short, condensed 
notices, which increase in fulness and richness of contents as 
his life advances. From 1817 they average nearly four vol- 
umes a year. Important events are recorded with great ac- 
curacy. Days like those which followed Schiller's death 
contain no entry. These diaries furnish means for determin- 
ing the dates of Goethe's works, since little that the poet wrote 
went at once to the press. Many works were for years under 
his hand ; they were begun, discontinued, resumed, modified, 
and completed, and their final form differed greatly from the 
original plan. 

The art collections are extensive, and of great interest. 
They contain plaster casts; original drawings of the old mas- 
ters, Netherland art being especially represented; and even 
sketches of early Italian painters ; many drawings of personal 
friends, such as Tischbein, Meyer, Hackert, Kraaz, Angelica 
Kaufmann, and Kniep ; a rich collection of majolicas; Italian 
medals, two thousand in number, some of which are unique ; 
numerous plaques, two hundred Italian and German bronzes, 



xiv 



INTRODUCTION. 



antiques, and a large number of engravings. To these general 
art collections have been added, by gift of the heirs at law 
(the families of Count Henckel von Donnersmark and the 
Vulpius family), the personal memorials of the poet, consist- 
ing of portraits, busts, medallions, and casts of the same. 
Among these are portraits of Goethe by Angelica Kaufmann 
and Tischbein, and also a graceful portrait, probably repre- 
senting Christiane. 

Two portraits of Goethe are given in our volume ; 
one representing him in youth, before the publication 
of any except his earliest works ; the other engraved 
from Kauch's bust, which was made in August, 1820, 
when Goethe was seventy-one. Both are interesting, 
and neither is much known in America, although 
reduced copies of the bust are common. 

A partial bibliography of works relating to Goethe's 
youth will be found at the close of Professor White's 
lecture. We add here a more general, but still very 
incomplete bibliography, compiled by Mr. John Ed- 
mands of the Philadelphia Mercantile Library, for the 
benefit of the frequenters of that institution. 



INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



BEADING NOTES ON GOETHE. 

The following notes and references will be found per- 
tinent, and will be useful to any who may wish to pursue 
a course of reading on these subjects : — 

A. — "Woeks of Goethe. 

^Autobiography ; or, Truth and Poetry, from my Life, edited by P. 

Godwin. New York, 1846-47. 2 v. 
VBride of Corinth, with Anster's Faust. 
Campaign in France, translated by E. Fairie. London, 1858. 
Same, in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 71-247. 
Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe from 1794-1805, edited 
by L. D. Schmitz. London, 1877. 2 v. 
^Dramatic "Works ; comprising Faust, Iphigenia in Tauris, Torquato 
Tasso, Egmont, and Gotz von Berlichingen. London, 1851. 
Egmont ; a Tragedy in Five Acts. Boston, 1841. 
Elective Affinities. Boston, 1872. 

Same, in Novels and Tales. Reviewed in Revue des Deux Mondes, 
C. 863. 

Eleonora, with a Poetic Epistle from Werter to Charlotte. London, 
1787. 

Essays on Art, translated by S. G. Ward. New York, 1862. 
Faust, eine Tragodie. Stuttgart, 1867. 

Faustus, a Dramatic Mystery ; the Bride of Corinth, the first Wal- 
purgis Night, translated and illustrated with Notes by J. Anster. 
London, 1835. 

Faust ; a Tragedy in Two Parts, translated by J. Birch, with en- 
gravings by Brain after Retsch. London, 1839. 

Same, translated, with Notes, by C. T. Brooks. [Part I. only.] 
Boston, 1856. 

Same, translated by L. Filmore. London, 1847. 



xvi 



INTRODUCTION. 



Same, translated into Verse by J. Galvan. Dublin, 1860. 

Same, translated, with Notes, by A. Hayward. Boston, 1859. 
Part I. " Previous to Taylor's translation Hayward's prose ren- 
dering was the leading work consulted by scholars on account 
of its full notes and lengthy introduction." — Literary World, 
XII. 273. 

Same, translated by T. Martin. Edinburgh, 1865. Reviewed in 

North British Review. XLIV. 50. 
Same, translated in Rime by C. Kegan Paul. London, 1873. Re- 
viewed in Revue des Deux Mondes, CXLIII. 921. 
Same, translated into the Original Metres by Bayard Taylor. Bos- 
ton, 1871. 2 v. Has a Preface and extended Notes. " Bayard 
Taylor's notes and comments are exhaustive, and must be con- 
sulted by any student of the subject who wishes to go to the 
bottom of disputed points. His translations are quoted even by 
the latest and best German commentators in proof of the meaning 
of doubtful passages." — Literary World, XII. 273. 
Same. The Text, with English Notes, Essays, and Verse Transla- 
tions, by E. J. Turner. London, 1882. The First Part only, 
ame. Shelley's Translations of the Prologue in Heaven and of 
the May-day Night scene, may be found in his Poetical "Works. 
London, 1877. IV. 284. 
Same. The Liberal. London, 1822. I. 121. 
Boyesen's Goethe and Schiller has a full and elaborate Commentary 
on the two parts of Faust, pp. 151-285. 
\/The original Faust-Legend may be found in Roscoe's German Novel- 
ists, I. 256. 
Faust and Marguerite. V. 35. 
German Emigrants in his Novels and Tales. 
Good Women in his Novels and Tales. 

Gotz of Berlichingen, with the Iron Hand, an Historical Drama. 
Dublin, 1799. 

Gbtz von Berlichingen in his Dramatic Works. 

Herman and Dorothea, translated by Ellen Frothingham. Illus- 
trated. Boston, 1870. 

Same, translated into English Hexameters, with an Introductory 
Essay. London, 1849. 

Same, translated by T. C. Porter. New York, 1854. 



INTRODUCTION. 



xvii 



Iphigenia in Tauris, translated by W. Taylor, in his Historic Sur- 
vey of German Poetry. London, 1830. III. 249. 
Same in his Dramatic Works. 

Margaret Fuller in her Life Without, p. 51, gives a sketch of this 
Drama, with Extracts. 

Letters from Switzerland, in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 1-67. 

Letters to Leipzig Friends, edited by 0. Jahu, translated by R. 
Slater. London, 1866. 

Meister's Travels ; or, The Renunciants, a Novel. Boston, 1851. 

Memoirs written by himself. New York, 1824. 

The same as the Autobiography above, but another transla- 
tion, and contains only fifteen of the twenty books. It contains 
biographical notices of the principal persons mentioned in the 
memoirs. "A most wretched and unfaithful translation." — 
Quarterly Review. 

Minor Poetry, a Selection from his Songs, Ballads, and other lesser 
Poems, translated by W. G. Thomas. Philadelphia, 1859. 

Miscellaneous Travels ; comprising Letters from Switzerland, the 
Campaign in France, the Siege of Mainz, and a Tour on the 
Rhine. London, 1882. 

Novels and Tales : Elective Affinities, Sorrows of Werther, German 
Emigrants, Good Women. London, 1854. 

Poems and Ballads, translated by Aytoun and Martin. New York, 
1859. 

Poems, translated in the Original Metres by Paul Dyrsen. New 
York, 1878. 

Poems and Translations from the German, by C. R. Lambert. 
London, 1850. pp. 81-98. 

Reynard the Fox. London, 1845. 

Sammtliche Werke. Stuttgart, 1850. 30 v. in 18. 

Schriften. Reutlinger, 1784. 2 v. 

Select Minor Poems, translated by J. S. Dwight. 

Select Poems, in Baskerville's Poetry of Germany. New York, 
1857. Contains a number of Goethe's Poems in the original, 
with English verse translations on the opposite page. 

Selections from Dramas, translated, with Introduction, by A. Swan- 
wick. London, 1843. 

Siege of Mainz, in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 251-287. 

b 



xviii 



INTRODUCTION. 



Sorrows of Werter, translated by W. Bender. London, 1801. 
Stella : a Drama in Five Acts, translated by Benjamin Thompson. 

German Theatre, Y. 6. London, 1801. 
Torquato Tasso, in his Dramatic Works. 

A Tour on the Ehine, etc., in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 291- 
424. 

Truth and Poetry, same as the Autobiography above. 

The First Walpurgis Night. (The English version by W. Bar- 
tholomew.) Compiled by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Bos- 
ton [no date]. 

Werther, Trad. nouv. et Notice biog. et litt. de L. Enault. Paris, 
1855. 

"West-Easterly Divan, translated, with Introduction and Notes, by 
J. Weiss. Boston, 1877. Reviewed in Blackwood, CXXXII. 
742. 

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. London, 1873. Reviewed by 
D. A. Wasson in Atlantic Monthly, p. 16. 

B. — Works on Goethe. 

De Stael, Madame. Goethe and his Dramas in her Germany. 
London, 1814. I. 265, II. 138. 

Taylor, W. Review of Goethe's Works in his Historic Survey 
of German Poetry. London, 1830. III. 242-379. Contains a 
Translation of Iphigenia entire, and large portions of other works. 

Carlyle, T. Death of Goethe, in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous 
Essays. London, 1872. IV. 42. 

. Goethe in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous Essays. Lon- 
don, 1872. I. 172. 

. Goethe's Works and Character, in his Criticisms and Mis- 
cellaneous Essays. Boston, 1838. I. 220. 

. Goethe's Helena, in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous Essays. 

Boston, 1838. I. 162. 

. Same. London, 1872. I. 126. 

. Goethe's Works, in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous Essays. 

London, 1872. IY. 132. 

. Life of Schiller. New York, 1846. Describes the friend- 
ship between Goethe and Schiller, pp. Ill, 273. 



INTRODUCTION. 



xix 



Ec Hermann, J. P. Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of 
his Life, translated by S. M. Fuller [Ossoli]. Boston, 1839. 

Menzel, W. Goethe, in his German Literature, translated by C. C. 
Felton. Boston, 1840. III. 1. 

Austin, S. Characteristics of Goethe, from the German of Falk, 
von Miiller, &c, with Notes. Paris, 1841. 2 v. 

Retsch, M. Illustrations of Goethe's Faust. London, 1843. 

Characteristics of Men of Genius. Goethe. London, 1846. 

Jeffrey, Francis. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, in his Contributions 
to the Edinburgh Review. Paris, 1846. p. 104. 

Ulrici, H. Goethe in Relation to Shakespeare, in his Shakespeare's 
Dramatic Art. London, 1846. p. 512. 

Longfellow, H. W. Goethe, in his Hyperion. Boston, 1849. p. 155. 

Moschzisker, F. A. Goethe, in his Guide to German Literature. 
London, 1850. II. 95-170. 

Emerson, R. W. Goethe, or the Writer, in his Eepresentative Men. 
Boston, 1851. p. 209. 

Doring, H. J. W. von Goethe's Biographic Jena, 1853. 

Bancroft, G. The Age of Schiller and Goethe, in his Literary and 
Historical Miscellanies, p. 167. New York, 1855. Contains 
translations of several of Goethe's poems, p. 231. 

Lewes, G. H. The Life and "Works of Goethe, with Sketches of his 
Age and Contemporaries. London, 1875. 2 v. 

. Same. Boston, 1856. 2 v. 

"Mr. Lewes' s main work was done a long time ago, when com- 
paratively few of Goethe's letters were printed. And the re- 
vision mentioned in the Preface of 1875 was not a thorough, 
adequate revision." — T. W. Lyster. 

Masson, David. Shakespeare and Goethe, and The Three Devils, 
Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's, in his Essays, Biographical and 
Critical. Cambridge, 1856. pp. 453. 

. The Three Devils. London, 1874. pp. 1-124. 

Godwin, Parke. Goethe, in his Out of the Past, p. 341. New 
York, 1870. 

Taillandier, Saint-Rene. Goethe, in Nouvelle Biographie Generale. 

Paris, 1857. XXI. 27. 
Metcalfe, Frederick. Goethe, in his History of German Literature. 

London, 1858. pp. 431-453. 



XX 



INTRODUCTION. 



Arnim, Bettine von. Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. 
Boston, 1859. For a review of this work, by M. E. W. Sher- 
wood, see Atlantic Monthly, XXXI. 216. 

Ossoli, Margaret Fuller. Goethe, in her Life Without and Life 
Within. Boston [1859]. p. 23. 

De Quincey, T. Goethe, in his Biographical Essays. Boston, 1860. 
p. 227. 

Heine, W. The Romantic School. New York, 1882. The chap- 
ter on " German Literature to the Death of Goethe," treats largely 
of Goethe and his relations to Herder, Lessing, the Schlegels, 
and others. 

StefFens, H. Story of My Career. Boston, 1863. This book was 
subsequently issued as " German University Life." 

Merivale, Herman. Voltaire, Eousseau, and Goethe, in his His- 
torical Studies. London, 1865. p. 130. 

Caro, E. La Philosophic de Goethe. Revue des Deux Mondes. 
Paris, 1865-66. LIX., LX. 147, 301, LXI. 623, LXII. 386. 

Belani, W. C. R. Goethe und sein Liebeleben. Historischer No- 
vellenkreis. Leipzig, 1866. 3 v. 

Calvert, G. H. Weimar, in his First Year in Europe. Boston, 
1866. pp. 165-198. 

. Goethe : His Life and Works. An Essay. Boston, 1872. 

pp. 276. 

. Goethe, in his Coleridge, Shelley, and Goethe. Boston, 

1880. p. 261. 

Conway, M. D. A Hunt after Devils, in Harper's Magazine, 

March, 1869. XXXYIII. 540. Contains notices of places and 

incidents connected with Faust and with Goethe's house. 
Robinson, H. Crabb. Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence. 

Boston, 1869. 2 v. 
Blaze de Bury, H. Madame de Stein et Goethe. Revue des Deux 

Mondes. Paris, 1870. LXXXYI. 900. 
Konewka, Paul. Illustrations of Goethe's Faust. Boston, 1871. 

Twelve silhouette designs with Taylor's translations. 
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, K. Goethe and Mendelssohn (1821-1831), 

translated, with additions, by M. E. von Glehn. London, 1872. 
Mezieres, A. Une Page de la Yie de Goethe. Ses Affinites Elec- 

tives. Revue des Deux Mondes. Paris, 1872. 



INTRODUCTION. 



xxi 



Gostwick, James, and E. Harrison. Outlines of German Literature. 

London, 1873. pp. 221-299, 440. 
Helmholtz, H. On Goethe's Scientific Researches, in his Popular 

Lectures on Scientific Subjects. 1st ed. London, 1873. pp. 

33-59. 

. Ueber Goethe's naturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, in his 

Populare wissenschaftliche Yortrage. Braunschweig, 1876. pp. 
33-53. 

Phelps, Almira L. Life and Writings of Goethe, in her Reviews 
and Essays. Philadelphia, 1873. p. 180. 

Lazarus, Emma. Alide : an Episode of Goethe's Life. Phila- 
delphia, 1874. 

Hutton, R. H. Goethe and His Influence, in his Essays in Liter- 
ary Criticism. Philadelphia, 1876. pp. 1-97. 

Sime, James. Lessing. Boston, 1877. 2 v. Exhibits the literary 
relation of Goethe and Lessing, with the latter's criticisms on 
Goethe's Works. 

Hay ward, A. Goethe, in Foreign Classics for English Readers. 

Philadelphia [London, 1878]. 
Arnold, M. A French Critic on Goethe, in his Mixed Essays. 

New York, 1879. p. 274. 
Barine, Arvide. La Legende de Faust. Revue des Deux Mondes. 

Paris, 1879. CXLII. 921. 
Boyesen, H. H. Goethe and Schiller : their Lives and Works, 

including a Commentary on Faust. New York, 1879. 
Browning, Oscar. Goethe, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 9th ed. 

London, 1879. X. 721. Contains an extended list of German 

authorities on Goethe. 
Taylor, Bayard. Goethe, and Goethe's Faust, in his Studies in 

German Literature. New York, 1879. pp. 304-387. 
Goethe, Catherine E. (Goethe's mother). Correspondence with 

Goethe, Lavater, Wieland et al. f translated, with Biographical 

Sketches and Notes, by Alfred S. Gibbs. New York, 1880. 

pp. 263. 

Grimm, H. Life and Times of Goethe, translated by S. H. Adams. 

Boston, 1880. pp. 559. 
Japp, Alexander H. Goethe, in his German Life and Literature. 

London [1881]. pp. 269-379. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Stevens, Abel. Madame de Stael : a Study of her Life and Times. 

New York, 1881. The second volume contains notices of Weimar 

and its literary celebrities. 
Blackie, J. S. Wisdom of Goethe. Edinburgh, 1883. pp. 246. 
Diintzer, H. Life of Goethe, translated by T. W. Lyster. New 

York [London], 1884. pp. 796. 
Lewes, M. A. Three Months in Weimar, in her Essays and Leaves 

from a Note-Book, by George Eliot. New York, 1884. p. 226. 

Gives an account of Goethe's life and associations at Weimar. 
Nevinson, H. Herder and His Times. London, 1884. 
Seeley, J. R. Goe.the, in Contemporary Eeview. August, October, 

November, 1884. XLYI. 166, 488, 653. 

C. — Papers on Goethe, in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 
(D. Appleton & Co., New York.) 

Goethe's Theory of Colors, by W. T. Harris. I. 63. 

Goethe's Faust, Letters on, by H. C. Brockmeyer. I. 178, II. 114. 

Rosenkranz, Johann Karl Friedrich. On the Second Part of Faust. 

Translated by D. J. Snider. I. 65. 
— — . On the Social Romances. Translated by T. Davidson. 

II. 120, 215. 

— . On the Wilhelm Meister. Translated byT. Davidson. IY. 
145. 

. On the Composition of the Social Romances. Translated 

by D. J. Snider. IY. 268. 
. On Goethe's Maerchen. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. 

Y. 219. 

. On the Faust. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. IX. 48, 

225, 401. 

— . On Faust and Margaret. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. 
X. 37. 

. On the Second Part of Faust. Translated by Anna C. 

Brackett. XL 113. 
Goethe's Essay on Da Yinci's Last Supper. I. 243. 
Goethe's Essay on the Laokoon (tr.). II. 208. 
Goethe and German Fiction, F. G. Fairfield. IX. 303. 
Goethe's Song of the Spirit over the Water, F. R. Marvin. X. 215. 
Goethe's Das Marchen, by Gertrude Garrigues. XYII. 383. 



INTRODUCTION. 



\ 

xxiii 



The Lectures actually delivered at the School of 
Philosophy in the summer of 1885 were those in the 
following list, in the order indicated by the dates. 

CONCOED SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SEVENTH SESSION. 

LECTURES AND SUBJECTS, 1885. 

I. Goethe's Genius and Work. 

July 16. Goethe s Self-Culture. By Mr. John Albee, of New 
Castle, K H. 

" 18. Goethe and his " Mahrchen." By Rev. Dr. F. H. 

Hedge, of Cambridge, Mass. 
" 24. Goethe s Relation to Kant and Spinoza, in Philosophy , By 

Dr. F. L. Sold an, of St. Louis. 
" 20. Goethe s Faust. By Professor Harris. 
" 21. Goethe's Youth. By Professor H. S. White, of CorneU 

University. 

" 17. The " Ewig -Weibliche." By Mrs. E. D. Cheney, of 
Boston. 

" 22. Goethe's Faust. By Mr. D. J. Snider, of Cincinnati. 
" 20. Goethe's Relation to English Literature. By Mr. F. B. 
Sanborn. 

" 28. Goethe as a Man of Science. A Conversation conducted 
by Mr. Snider and Professor Harris. 

" 27. The Novellettes in "Wilhelm Meister." By Professor 
Harris. 

" 28. "Wilhelm Meister " as a Whole. By Mr. D. J. Snider. 
" 18. Goethe and Schiller. By Rev. Dr. Bartol, of Boston. 
Aug. 1. The Women of Goethe. By Mrs. Julia "Ward Howe, of 
Boston. 

July 22. The Elective Affinities. By Mr. S. H. Emery, Jr., of 
Concord, Mass. 



xxiv 



INTRODUCTION. 



July 25. Goethe's Titanism. By Professor Thomas Davidson, of 
Orange, N. J. 

" 23. Goethe at Weimar. By Professor "W. T. Hewett, of 

Cornell University. 
" 21. Child-Life as portrayed in Goethe's Works. By Mrs. 

Caroline K. Sherman, of Chicago. 
" 27. Goethe as Playwright. By Mr. William 0. Partridge, 

of Brooklyn, N. Y. 
" 29. The Style of Goethe. By Mr. C. W. Ernst, of Boston. 

II. A Symposium: Is Pantheism the Legitimate Outcome 
of Modern Science ? 

Lectures by Eev. Dr. A. P. Peabody (July 29) and Mr. John 
Fiske (July 29) of Cambridge, Professor Harris (July 30), Dr. 
G. H. Howison of California (July 31), Dr. F. E. Abbott (July 
31) of Cambridge, and Dr. Montgomery of Texas (July 31). 

Readings from Thoreau, July 24, by Mr. H. G. 0. Blake, of 
Worcester. 

The Lectures on Pantheism appeared in the " Jour- 
nal of Speculative Philosophy" for October, 1885, 
except Mr. Fiske's on " The Idea of God/' which has 
been published as a separate volume by Houghton, 
Mifflin, and Company, who published in the same 
way, in 1884, Mr. Fiske's Lecture on " The Destiny 
of Man." The Lectures of 1884, on "The Genius 
and Character of Emerson," were published in a vol- 
ume by J. E. Osgood and Company, and are now sold 
by Ticknor and Company, who publish the present 
volume; and members of the School are requested 
to order the volumes of the publishers, and not of 
the Faculty of the School. 

The Eighth Session of the School will open on 
Wednesday, July 14, 1886, and will continue two 



INTRODUCTION. 



xxv 



weeks. The lectures and conversations of the first 
week (July 14-21) will be on Dante and his Divine 
Comedy ; those of the second week (July 22-29), on 
Plato and his Influence in Philosophy. The Lecturers 
will be mainly the same as in 1885, but with some 
omissions and important additions. It is intended 
to publish a volume of the Lectures on Dante in 
1886. 

P. B. S. 

Concord, December 1, 1885. 




GOETHE IN YOUTH. 



GOETHE IN YOUTH. 



THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
GOETHE. 



I. 

GOETHE'S YOUTH. 

By HORATIO S. WHITE. 

It will readily be observed that Goethe's life may 
be divided into distinct periods, each defined by 
some change in his outward relations, and each 
characterized by some change in his inner develop- 
ment. The great divisions which would naturally 
be made are : his youth before the removal to Wei- 
mar ; the decade in that Thuringian capital preced- 
ing his departure for Italy, — a journey which forms 
the most significant epoch in his life ; the period of 
mature manhood following, which was passed in the 
society of Schiller ; and, finally, the long and fruitful 
old age during the first third of the present century. 
Leaving to others the task of tracing Goethe's later 
achievements in diverse fields, — where his tireless 
energy and his perennial vigor of spirit display him 
as the master of prose, the incomparable poet, the 

1 



2 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

literary despot, the histrionic magnate, the faithful 
prime-minister, the profound investigator and gifted 
discoverer, and the unwearied sage, — it shall be my 
attempt to depict him in his early youth, and in 
that perhaps most fascinating time of his young 
manhood embracing the dawning consciousness of 
varied powers which came to him at Strassburg, the 
stimulating intercourse with Herder, the impulse 
toward the study of Greek and English literature, 
the fleeting fervor for Gothic architecture, the sad 
but lovely idyl of Sessenheim, the tempestuous ardor 
of the Wetzlar entanglement, and the first flush of 
creative genius breaking forth in " Gotz," in " Wer- 
ther," in his matchless lyrics, and in the beginnings 
of " Faust." 

For the study of this period we have ample sources. 
It is but a few years since a work appeared under 
the title, " Der junge Goethe," edited by Professor 
Bernays of Munich, and comprising the correspond- 
ence and literary proceeds of the first twenty-five 
years of Goethe's life. The editor had consulted the 
original manuscripts and first editions, and had in 
most cases carefully restored the early orthography, 
which had been modernized in the later revisions. 
All the spice and raciness of Goethe's youthful style, 
the strongly flavored South-German vernacular, the 
erratic spelling and still more erratic punctuation, 
have been preserved in their primitive freshness. 
Specially valuable is the series of letters in which 
his whole outward and inner life is mirrored with 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



3 



all the warmth of unreserve which marked the episto- 
lary literature of the last century. 

To this useful work let us add Goethe's Autobi- 
ography, covering precisely the same period, but 
composed at a much later date. 

" The question whether one should write his own 
biography," says Goethe, "is quite malapropos. I 
consider him who does so to be the most courteous 
of men." 

In his Autobiography he reports that throughout 
his life he could not refrain from embodying in a 
written form his personal experiences, whether to 
relieve his soul, or to establish his conceptions of 
external things. " Everything which has hitherto 
been known as mine," he concludes, " forms there- 
fore a great fragmentary confession, to make which 
complete this trifling work is a daring attempt." 

To Eckermann he said, in 1824 : " The most im- 
portant part of the individual's life is his develop- 
ment, which in my case is comprised in the detailed 
account of e Wahrheit und Dichtung.' " And in 1831 
he declared that the particular facts narrated in his 
Autobiography served merely to confirm a general 
reflection, a higher truth. 

It is interesting to note, from a comparison between 
that work and the original sources, that, apart from 
some unessential inaccuracies and inconsistencies, 
Goethe's memory retained a trustworthy impression 
of his early experiences. It is true that discrepan- 
cies of detail have often crept into the relation ; that 



4 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



events may have been described in a manner some- 
what different from that of their actual occurrence ; 
that .a character may have been idealized, and the 
outlines softened and harmonized to accord with the 
poet's purpose. But with all this, the portrayal of 
his youthful days must be considered thoroughly 
faithful to the inner meaning of his life. 

Other contemporary accounts of Goethe's early 
career exist, together with a vast mass of commen- 
tary ; but these two sources are sufficient to present 
him to us both as he unconsciously depicted him- 
self at the time, and as he afterwards consciously 
depicted himself to the world. 

It may be appropriate at this point to recall the 
principal features of Goethe's earlier years. We find 
in them an exceptional concurrence of fortunate cir- 
cumstances. Born into an advantageous environ- 
ment, an independent citizen of a free municipality, 
endowed with great natural gifts, possessed of va- 
ried accomplishments and acquirements, with com- 
fortable if not affluent means, coming into contact 
with many of the illustrious people of his day, and 
viewing many of the notable events of that period, 
his life assumes more than an individual interest, 
and becomes important and significant as typifying 
and illustrating his times. The Lisbon earthquake 
touches his young heart, and forces him to question 
the goodness of the Creator; the French occupy 
Frankfort, and he is initiated into the political 
quarrels of the Seven Years' War ; in his rambles 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



5 



among the common people at their labors and their 
pastimes in that curious old town, he imbibes the 
spirit of their walk and conversation, which is after- 
wards reflected with fidelity in the popular scenes 
of his dramas ; the coronation of Joseph the Second 
unrolls before his eyes the pageantry of the pom- 
pous but hollow Empire ; as a student at Leipzig he 
skims round the circle of knowledge, and chants, 

"Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Thor, 
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor." 

The Dresden Gallery attracts and charms him with 
its pictorial treasures ; in Frankfort the gentle and 
devout mystic, Fraulein von Klettenberg, pursues 
with him studies in alchemy, and imbues him with 
the doctrines of pietism; and in 1770 he arrives at 
Strassburg, in season to behold the daughter of Maria 
Theresia crossing the Ehine on her triumphal and 
fateful journey toward the French capital. 

Let us here note a few characteristic passages from 
his earlier letters. Writing in 1764, at the age of 
fourteen, he describes himself as follows : — 

"One of my chief defects is, that I am somewhat 
impulsive. You know of course the choleric tempera- 
ment ; on the other hand, no one forgets an affront more 
readily than L Furthermore, I am quite accustomed to 
be imperious ; but when I have nothing to say, I can let 
things go. However, I am quite willing to submit to 
authority when it is exercised as should be expected. 
One thing more, I am very impatient, and do not like to 
remain long in uncertainty. " 



6 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



To a home friend he writes from Leipzig, in 1765, 
describing his college life : — 

"What am I studying? Is it worth while asking? 
Institutiones imperiales. Historiam juris. Pandectas, and 
a private course on the first seven and last seven titles 
of the Codex. For one does not need any more, the rest 
one forgets anyway. No, your obedient servant ! That 
we will let well alone. — Next week the courses in philos- 
ophy and mathematics begin. 

" Gottsched I have not yet seen. He has married 
again. You know it though. She is nineteen and he is 
sixty-five. She is four shoes tall and he seven. She is 
as thin as a herring and he as stout as a sack of feathers. 
— I 'm cutting a great figure here, but am no dandy yet, 
nor shall I become so. I have to be rather clever in 
order to get time to study. To parties, concerts, the 
theatre, at banquets, suppers, excursions, no end ! Ah, 
it's a precious time, but a precious business too ! It 
costs ! The deuce, but my purse feels it. 

" Stop ! save us ! hold on ! Don't you see them flying 1 
There go two Louis d'or marching off. Help ! There 
goes another. Heavens ! a couple more. Dimes with us 
are like cents with you. But yet one may live very 
cheaply here. I hope to get through the year on three 
hundred thalers — what do I say 1 — with two hundred 
thalers. N. B. Not counting in what has already gone 
to the dogs." 

At the end of his Leipzig course he writes back, 
in 1768, a grateful letter to Oeser, one of his in- 
structors : — 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



7 



" What do I not owe you, dearest Professor, that you 
have shown me the way to the true and beautiful, that 
you have rendered my heart susceptible to all that is 
stimulating % The taste which I have for what is beauti- 
ful, my knowledge, my insight, — do I not possess them 
all through you % How true and clear the strange, almost 
unintelligible saying has become to me, that the work- 
shop of the great artist develops the budding philosopher, 
the budding poet, more than the auditorium of the sage 
and the critic ! Teaching does much, but encouragement 
does everything. Who among all my teachers has ever 
deemed me worthy of encouragement save you % Either 
all blame or all praise, and nothing can so destroy one's 
capacity. Encouragement after blame is sun after rain, 
fruitful growth. 

" You have taught me to be humble without being cast 
down, and to be proud without presumption. I could 
find no end of saying what you have taught me ; pardon 
my grateful heart this apostrophe \ I have that in com- 
mon with all tragic heroes, that my passion would fain 
pour forth in tirades, and woe to the one who gets in the 
way of my lava ! " 

These earlier years yielded an abundance of literary 
composition, the remnants of which reveal not indis- 
tinctly the coming lyric poet, while the two little 
comedies of that date betray the influence upon their 
composer of the lighter French dramatists, and per- 
haps of Wieland, with whose writings he was then 
quite captivated. One may also detect reflections in 
thin disguise of Goethe's juvenile affaires de cceur, 
the confession of which has already begun. 



8 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



To Strassburg he comes at twenty. Of deep im- 
port was his sojourn in the quaint Alsatian city. It 
gave him the Cathedral, Herder, and Friederike. 

At Leipzig Goethe had been led to regard the term 
Gothic as the Greeks did Barbarian. An ignorant 
but declared enemy to that style of architecture, he 
is now confronted in silent reproach by the mighty 
and impressive minster. His conversion is as sudden 
and complete as that of Saul of Tarsus ; and in the 
rhapsodic essay, " Von Deutscher Baukunst," a memo- 
rial to the noble architect, Erwin von Steinbach, is 
contained his recantation. He bursts forth : — 

"With what an unexpected sensation did its aspect 
surprise me ! My soul was filled by an impression of 
grandeur and completeness, which, consisting of a thou- 
sand harmonious details, I was able indeed to taste and 
enjoy, without recognizing or explaining it. They say it 
is so with the joys of heaven ; and how often have I re- 
turned to partake of this joy of heaven upon earth, to 
comprehend the giant spirit of our elder brothers in their 
works ! How often has my eye, wearied by its searching 
inspection, been refreshed in cheerful repose by the even- 
ing twilight, when the countless parts melted into entire 
masses, and these, simple and grand, stood before my 
soul ! Then was revealed to me in gentle premonitions 
the genius of the great master. And how freshly it 
dawned upon me in the vaporous splendor of the morn- 
ing ! How rejoiced I was to behold the great, harmonious 
masses enlivened into numberless minute details, as in 
works of eternal nature, down to the slightest fibre, every- 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



9 



thing form, and everything adapted to the whole ! how 
the firmly founded monstrous structure rises lightly into 
air ! how like network all, and yet for eternity ! " 

If these early and enthusiastic impressions gradu- 
ally faded, and well-nigh were extinguished by the 
stay in Italy, at the end of Goethe's life they were 
once more revived, less ardent, but with greater clear- 
ness, and again through the influence of his study of 
another worthy and imposing structure, the Cathedral 
at Cologne. 

Before meeting Herder in Strassburg, Goethe had 
not come into contact with a mind of the first order. 
Herder was five years older, had already gained repu- 
tation as a writer, and had recently returned to Ger- 
many from an extended tour in France and Holland. 
He writes to his Eiga friends, that, whereas before 
he had been frothy, vain, erratic, and whimsical, they 
would now find him more manly, ripe, developed, 
cosmopolitan, more of a Briton, and perchance thrice 
as ardent, instead of frivolous, Frenchy, and unstable. 
His relation to Goethe was similar to Goethe's rela- 
tions with Schiller at the first meeting in 1788, after 
the Italian journey. Said Schiller, in describing to 
Korner this interview : " Goethe is so far ahead of 
me, less perhaps in years than in experience of life 
and in self-development, that we shall never come 
together while en route,!' Goethe felt toward Herder 
the same modesty of immaturity ; nor did Herder, to 
whom his young admirer seemed then but a wild 
fledgling, seek to spare his sensibilities. Mercilessly 



10 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



caustic, lashing Goethe's foibles and conceits, estab- 
lishing no such relations of mutual admiration and 
mutual palliation as then existed among many promi- 
nent German litterateurs, yet holding him by force of 
lofty character and a reach and range which Goethe 
fully acknowledged, a moral pedagogue of the finest 
type, and already a literary critic and historian of 
independent and original stamp, his was an influence 
to correct, to guide, and to inspire his fervid young 
follower. It is Herder, then, who expounds to Goethe 
the bearings of modern literature, who rails at the 
weaknesses of the contemporary native authors, who, 
fresh from Paris, yet sated with French materialism^ 
turns away from Voltaire and the philosophers, 
although for a time singling out Eousseau alone as 
the apostle of the day, and aids Goethe to check and 
overcome his own early tendencies, who introduces 
him to Swift, to Goldsmith, to Ossian, and to Shake- 
speare anew, who teaches him to know the Greeks, 
to appreciate the Hebrew bards, and to realize* that 
poetry is not the possession of a learned caste, but 
the heritage of all mankind. 

In that initial year of their acquaintance Goethe 
thus addresses his new correspondent : — 

" I am compelled to write to you in the midst of my 
first sensations. Away with mantle and collar ! Your spicy 
letter is worth three years of every-day experience. There 
is no answer to it, and who could answer it 1 My whole 
self is thrilled, — that you may imagine, man, — and the 
vibration is still too great for my pen to move steadily. — 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



11 



Herder, Herder, abide to me what you are to me. If I 
am destined to be your planet, I will be so, will be so 
gladly, will be so loyally. A friendly moon to the earth. 
But this — feel it absolutely — that I should rather be 
Mercury, the least, the smallest rather among seven, re- 
volving with you around one sun, than the first among 
five turning about Saturn. 

" Adieu, dear man ! I will not let you go. I will not 
leave you. Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord. 
Even if I should grow weary at it ! " 

The later relations of Herder and Goethe at Wei- 
mar are beyond the scope of this paper, but we may 
recall that it was the latter's influence which secured 
for Herder his summons to the principal ecclesiastical 
position in the Duchy, and that, if their subsequent 
association was not always of the most cordial de- 
scription, the fault or the misfortune must be laid 
chiefly at the door of the Herders. 

Before leaving Strassburg, a word on Friederike. 
The well-known incidents of the story may be briefly 
narrated. 1 A young man, fresh from the perusal of a 
literature of poetry and sentiment, wanders away on 
horseback with a student friend over the smiling 
meadows. In the picturesque little village of Sessen- 
heim he is presented to a pastor's family, whose sit- 
uation to his quick imagination soon reproduces, with 
strange parallelism, the environment of the Wakefield 
group in Goldsmith's " Vicar," a work which Herder 

1 Cf. "A Pilgrimage to Sesenheim," Lippincott's Magazine, 
February, 1884. 



12 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



was introducing to Strassburg circles. Eeceived with 
full rural cordiality, he lingers and returns, and re- 
turns and lingers, until a fair heart is fatally his own. 
The end of his academic course is the end of the idyl. 
The world demands him, and to the world he yields 
himself ; and a summer of perilous sweetness has sad- 
dened one joyous life, and left in another a lasting 
sting of remorse. Traces of this remorse one may 
find in the long deferred confession which Goethe's 
narrative contains, — a narrative which the aged poet 
could not dictate without signs of deep emotion. He 
depicts his conscious feeling that a withdrawal would 
be indefensible, his inability to break away from the 
beloved object even when he had in purpose re- 
nounced her, the pain of the final parting, and the 
heart-rending answer of Friederike to a farewell in 
writing. " Here for the first time," he continues, " I 
was guilty, I had keenly wounded a most beautiful 
soul ; and the period which followed was an almost 
unendurable time of gloomy repentance." He seeks 
for aid in poetry, and acknowledges that the two 
Marys in " Gotz " and " Clavigo," and the sorry roles 
which their lovers play, are the results of his remorse- 
ful contemplations. In the Gretchen of " Faust," too, 
one may recognize traits of the unaffected village 
maiden; and some of the most irresistible of Goethe's 
earlier poems were directly inspired by his acquaint- 
ance with Friederike Brion. What a gust of stormy 
fervor sweeps through the stanzas of " Willkommen 
und Abschied " ! 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



13 



" Es schlug mein Herz ; geschwind zu Pferde, 

Und fort, wild, wie ein Held zur Schlaclit! 
Der Abend wiegte schon die Erde, 

Und an den Bergen hieng die Eacht; 
Schon stund im Nebelkleid die Eiche, 

Wie ein gethiirmter Riese, da, 
"Wo Finsterniss aus dem Gestrauche 

Mit hundert schwarzen Augen sah. 

"Der Mond von seinem Wolkenhiigel, 

Schien schlafrig aus dem Duft hervor; 
Die Winde schwangen leise Fliigel, 

Umsausten schauerlich mein Ohr ; 
Die Nacht schuf tausend Ungeheuer — 

Doch tausendfacher war mein Muth; 
Mein Geist war ein verzehrend Feuer, 

Mein ganzes Herz zerfloss in Gluth." 

And again in the glad " Mayfest/' where every line 
is a joyous heart-beat : — 

"Wie herrlich leuchtet 
Mir die Natur ! 
Wie glanzt die Sonne ! 
Wie lacht die Flur ! 

" Es dringen Bliiten 
Aus jedem Zweig, 
Und tausend Stimmen 
Aus dem Gestrauch. 

" Und Freud' und Wonne 
Aus jeder Brust. 
Erd ! Sonne ! 
Gliiek ! Lust ! " 

But Sessenheim was not enough; for this way- 
wardness of Goethe ceased not with maturer years. 
That the poet has been his own accuser cannot ren- 



14 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



der one's censure less severe. For this censure is 
undoubtedly induced by the feeling that, if a great 
genius should not need to be governed by the same 
laws perhaps as the ordinary mortal, this must hap- 
pen by reason of his rising superior to those laws, 
not by his falling subject to their jurisdiction and 
then claiming exemption by a special act of grace. 
Such censors feel that Goethe's life, despite its 
great intellectual sweep, does not mirror a moral 
career correspondingly pure and lofty. To guard 
an artless maiden against the involuntary devia- 
tions of her unshielded heart, to observe not merely 
the visible and outward, but the invisible spiritual 
sanctities of betrothal and wedlock, to despise not, 
even in externals, the righteous formalities of the 
marriage tie, — this much, at least, may be de- 
manded of that man before whom we are to bow 
the head. It is this fine " sense of conduct," to bor- 
row a happy phrase of Matthew Arnold, the lack 
of which many severe Western Puritans deplore in 
the author of " Stella," and such a lack to them 
fatally mars Goethe's character. 1 Whether this lack 
arose from the constitution of society in Goethe's 
day, or was an innate defect of his own, we shall 
leave for others to decide. Yet a faithful chronicler 
of Goethe's early years may not write, as the English 
Laureate of his friend, 

"A passion pure in snowy bloom 
Through all the years of April blood." 

1 Cf. Das Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1884, p. 237, " Goethe in Amerika." 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



15 



Nor in spite of Goethe's ardent human praise of 
woman, and the many exquisite feminine portraits 
which he has drawn, do we find that reverential and 
ethereal adoration in thought and act of which types 
are not wanting in modern literature and life. While 
conceding, then, the wide sweep of his sympathies 
and of his intellectual powers, it must not be consid- 
ered unjust to Goethe to deny him, not moral emi- 
nence, but that moral pre-eminence which is the mark 
of the finest spiritual organizations. 

The four years, from 1771 to 1775, between Goe- 
the's departure from Strassburg and his arrival in 
Weimar, were filled with varied experiences and 
with the most active literary productivity. It was 
a whirl of journey upon journey, of friendship added 
to friendship, of love affair and tender attachment. 
On one side, Schlosser, Merck, Gotter, Kestner, the 
Stolbergs, Leuchsenring, Lavater, Basedow, Klop- 
stock, the Jacobis, Knebel, and the Weimar princes ; 
and on the other, Lotte, La Eoche and Maximiliane, 
Fraulein von Klettenberg, Anna Monch, the Countess 
Stolberg, and Lilli von Schonemann ; while the 
restless youth ycleped the Wanderer went roaming 
through the woody solitudes about his native place ; 
or visited the courts at Wetzlar to pursue anything but 
law ; or strayed up and down the Main and Ehine and 
Lahn, or through the pleasant South-German cities, or 
into Switzerland and over the St. Gothard ; and again 
from Frankfort setting out for Italy, but turning 
back at Heidelberg, and onward at last to Weimar. 



16 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Equally nomadic, too, his intellectual career. Os- 
tensibly trained for the legal profession, his studies 
had spread over a far wider field. His note-books 
at the University disclose an interest in medicine, 
chemistry, anatomy, physics, philosophy, and general 
literature. Nor were music and art neglected. " To 
regard things carefully, to store them up in memory, 
to give good heed and let no day pass without col- 
lecting something, this," writes Goethe from Strass- 
burg, " is what we now have to do." And again : 
" Jurisprudence begins. to please me. After all, it is 
like Merseburg beer, — the first sip, you shudder, but 
after a week you cannot do without it. And chem- 
istry still remains my secret mistress." 

His first months in Frankfort give him a distaste 
for the practice of the law, as well as a prejudice 
against the aristocratic philistinism of the place. He 
institutes a Shakespeare celebration, and pronounces 
an ecstatic oration. 

" The first page which I read in him," he exclaims, 
11 made me his own for all my life, and when I had finished 
the first piece I stood as one born blind, to whom a mi- 
raculous touch has in a moment restored his vision. I 
recognized, I felt most keenly, that my existence was in- 
finitely broadened. All was new and unknown to me, 
and the unaccustomed radiance pained my sight. I 
doubted not a moment to renounce the regular theatre. 
Unity of place seemed to me so oppressively confining, 
unity of action and time burdensome fetters for our im- 
agination ! — And now that I saw how much the men of 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



17 



rules in their prison pen had wronged me, my heart 
would have burst if I had not declared war against them, 
and daily sought to storm their towers." 

It was his " Gotz von Berlichingen " which led 
the assault. No cold and stately hero from classic 
antiquity, but a valiant mediaeval German knight, 
bluff and honest, fuming and fighting, and dying 
bravely. 

Goethe waits for Herder's judgment. " Shake- 
speare has quite ruined you," exclaims impatiently 
Herder. " Enough," cries Goethe. " It must be 
melted down, freed from dross, furnished with nobler 
material, and be recast. Then shall it appear before 
you again." It is done, and with the several draughts 
before us we can watch the work and note the change. 
At last, a fresh, vigorous drama, or series of spirited 
dramatic tableaux and staccato dialogue, distin- 
guished by no unity of design nor historic accuracy, 
but, with all its ragged edges, a healthful, breezy, 
patriotic outburst. 

In 1772 the " Frankfurt Gelehrte Anzeigen," a 
semi weekly journal, was founded by friends of Goe- 
the, and created a great sensation. He, as well as 
Herder, becomes at once a collaborator, and a remark- 
able series of critical reviews is issued. Pungent, 
racy, epigrammatic, slashing away at all pretence 
however dignified, dealing fearless censure and whole- 
souled praise, — we need no acquaintance with the 
writings examined to appreciate and enjoy the clear 
view, the bubbling extravagance, the lusty blows, 

2 



18 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the wit, and withal the sound judgment which is 
displayed. 

Snatches only can we quote, from the collections of 
Bernays and of Scherer, for our space forbids longer 
and perhaps more significant passages. 

On a work entitled " Letters regarding the most 
important Truths of Revelation," he comments.: — 

" These letters are directed principally against the 
haughty sages of our century who see in God something 
else than the penal judge of degraded humanity, who 
believe that the creature of his hand is no monster, that 
in the sight of God this world is something more than 
the antechamber of the future state, and who peradven- 
ture even presume to hope that he will not punish to all 
eternity. We pass by the attacks upon the foes of reve- 
lation, which often are blows in the air ; the argumenta- 
tion regarding the history of mankind at the time of the 
Redeemer, and the many accumulated proofs of Chris- 
tianity of which one can no more demand than from a 
bundle of rods that they should all be of equal strength. 
But we ask all fanatics on both sides to consider whether 
it be seemly to maintain in a spirit of persecution that 
what it is claimed is regarded by God as good or evil on 
our part is good or evil in his sight too, or whether that 
which is refracted in our sight into two colors may not 
flow back to him in one ray of light. In this we all agree, 
that man should do that which we all call good, whether 
his spirit be a muddy pool or a mirror of beautiful nature, 
whether he has strength to journey along his way, or is 
sick and needs a crutch. Strength and crutch come from 
one hand. In that we agree, and that is enough ! 99 



GOETHE'S YOUTH, 



19 



The following notices illustrate what may be 
called the summary process : — 

" Address to his Royal Highness, the Grand-duke Paul 
Petrowitsch. Petersburg, 1772. — Alexander used to take 
a poet along with him, to whom he would give on contract 
a coin for every good verse and a cuff for every poor one. 
We trust that this poetic spokesman made other condi- 
tions for himself, and we admire the patience and vigi- 
lance of the young Duke, if he heard the address through 
without falling asleep." 

" The Brother. By a Lady. 2 vols. — We desire that 
this brother may remain the only son of his father ; for 
the work is beneath criticism." 

e " The Praise of Fashion, an Address delivered and 
printed a la Mode. 1772. . . . And also written a la 
mode ; that is, as badly as possible." 

" Wolf Krage, a Tragedy, by Johannes Ewald, from 
the Danish. 1772. — Night, high treason and fratricide, 
abomination and death, and gloom, horrors, pains of love 
and pains of dissolution, so that with a devout ' Heaven 
preserve us ! ' we began to think about going home 
betimes ! " 

"Lyric Poems by Blum. Berlin, 1772. . . . We wish the 
composer a first-rate girl, days of leisure, and the pure 
poetic spirit, without the spirit of authorship. The best of 
poets degenerates when he has the public in mind while 
composing, and when filled more with a desire for fame, 
especially newspaper fame, than with his subject." 

" Enlightened Times ; or a Contemplation of the Pres- 
ent Condition of the Sciences and Prevailing Customs in 



20 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Germany. Ziillichau, 1772. — A tedious academic discus- 
sion. The composer, who is probably quite young, at least 
quite inexperienced, knows the world only from the four 
faculties, and must have heard somewhere that we live 
in enlightened times. Now this vexes him, and so he 
proves that the philosophers are not enlightened because 
some still defend the best world; nor the doctors, be- 
cause so many men die ; nor the lawyers, because there 
are so many laws without lawsuits, and lawsuits without 
laws ; nor the theologians, because they are so obstinate, 
and because one falls asleep so often when they preach ; 
nor the humanists, because they do not pursue Latin 
and Greek with sufficient earnestness, make Hebrew so 
hard, write so many verses, and the like. Enlightened 
times ! If the fellow had only written about the man in 
the moon, or the polar bear ! That was his calling ! 
Any one who presumes to consider our times enlightened 
again, must read this whole work as a penalty; and he 
who considers them enlightened because he lives in them 
himself, must learn it all by heart." 

And finally one more extract, from a review of a 
work entitled, " A Characterization of the most 
refined European Nationalities. In Two Parts." 
Leipzig. 

" Character of refined nations ! Throw the coin into 
the crucible if you wish to learn its worth. From the 
stamp you will never find it out to all eternity. What 
then is the character of a polished nation? What else 
can it be than the reflection of the religion and the civic 
constitution in which a nation is set ; drapery, regarding 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



21 



which the most that one can say is how it may fit the 
nation. Perchance a philosophic observer might have 
produced a tolerable characterization. But the composer 
complacently made the grand tour through England, 
France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, 
looked into his Puffendorf, talked with fine ladies and 
gentlemen, and took his book and wrote. Unfortunately 
there is nothing in all the world more devious than fine 
ladies and gentlemen, and so his portrayals were also out 
of focus ; the Englishman he always defends against the 
Frenchman ; the Frenchman he always contrasts with the 
Englishman ; the former is simply frivolous, the latter 
simply strong, the Italian pompous and sedate, the Ger- 
man guzzling and counting up his ancestors. Everything 
by hearsay, on the surface, an abstract of 6 good society.' 

"And this he calls a characterization! What differ- 
ent judgments he would often have passed if he had con- 
descended to view the man in the midst of his family, 
the peasant on his farm, the mother among her children, 
the journeyman in his workshop, the honest burgher by 
his tankard of beer, and the scholar and merchant in his 
club or cafe ! But it did not even occur to him that 
there were any people there ; or if it did occur to him, 
how was he to have the patience, the time, the conde- 
scension ] To him all Europe was a fine French drama, 
or, what amounts to pretty much the same thing, a 
puppet play ! He peeped in, and peeped out again, and 
voila tout / " 

An important and perhaps somewhat neglected 
phase of Goethe's earlier years is his attitude in 
matters of religion. We sometimes hear him called 



22 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



"the great Pagan" a shallow echo of the reaction- 
ary romanticists and the strict ecclesiastics of sixty 
or seventy years ago. But the paganism of Goe- 
the, as Heine cleverly says, is marvellously modern- 
ized ; and if the middle period of his life betrays a 
drift toward classic heathendom, his youth, like his 
old age, bears the stamp of strong religious views, and 
a faith which in these days w r ould simply be termed 
liberal. His home training introduced him to cate- 
chism and dogma, and he was encouraged to report 
the sermons heard. The New Testament he learned 
to read in Greek, and the Old Testament in Hebrew. 
Stealthy hours were devoted to memorizing Klop- 
stock's "Messias," — a work which evidently inspired 
one of his earliest efforts, the poem on Christ's de- 
scent into hell, — and a Biblical epic in prose was 
partly accomplished. Much in the religious life of 
his day, and some peculiarities of the official repre- 
sentatives of the Church, did not appeal to his na- 
ture, nor did he seem to possess what are called 
"settled convictions"; but he honored the sacra- 
ments, and for many years pursued an independent 
and sober study of the Scriptures. 

A previous quotation has given the tendency of 
his thought regarding the truths of revelation. In a 
criticism of the history of Count Struensee's conver- 
sion, he remarks further : — 

" Of the worth of a conversion, God alone may judge ; 
God alone can know how great the step must be which 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



23 



the soul has to take here in order yonder to draw near 
to a communion with him, to the abode of perfection, 
and to the intercourse and friendship of higher beings. 
Thousands of open and secret foes of religion exist, thou- 
sands who would have loved Christ as their friend if he 
had been depicted to them as a friend, and not as a sullen 
tyrant, ever ready to crush with the thunderbolt where 
the highest perfection is not found." 

Goethe's youthful standpoint is still more clearly 
indicated in a short publication, dating from 1771, in 
the form of a letter from an aged pastor to his new 
colleague. Some people, he writes, find no pleasure 
in beim* Christians unless all the heathen are to be 
roasted forever ; but for his part he hurries over that 
doctrine as over red-hot iron. He has grown old in 
contemplating the ways of the Lord, and finds that 
God and Love are synonymous. He has no ground 
for doubting any one's salvation ; it is enough to 
believe in Divine Love revealed in Christ. Contro- 
versy he avoids ; it is easier to hold an eel by the 
tail than a sophist with reasons ; the divine nature 
of the Bible cannot be proven if it be not felt; 
Augsburg and Dordrecht make as little essential dif- 
ference in the religion of man as France and Ger- 
many in his nature ; the confession of faith was a 
formula necessary in order to establish something, 
but leaves him his Bible ; if one creed comes nearer 
the Word of God than another, so much the better 
for its confessors ; to force opinions upon one is cruel, 
but to require that one must feel what one cannot 



24 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



is tyrannous nonsense. Luther labored to free us 
from spiritual bondage, yet the Romish Church has 
preserved much of divine truth ; suffer it to be, and 
give it your blessing ! 

In a word, the essence of Goethe's creed was 
toleration. 

It was during this early period that Goethe be- 
came at least partially familiar w 7 ith the writings 
of Spinoza. Herman Grimm ranks the latter with 
Homer, Shakespeare, and Eaphael as one of the four 
great minds which had a lasting effect upon Goe- 
the, regarding them as representatives of Greece and 
Eome, with all the treasures which those names im- 
ply and include, and of the Germanic and Hebrew 
tradition. Goethe acknowledges to Eckermann, in 
1831, how well adapted to his own youthful necessi- 
ties were the views of the great Jewish thinker, in 
whom he found himself. Unable to distinguish be- 
tween what he brought to Spinoza's "Ethics" and 
what he took away, it was yet enough for Goethe 
that he there discovered that which calmed his emo- 
tions, — a grand and open survey of the sensuous and 
the moral world. But it was the boundless disinter- 
estedness of the contemplations of Spinoza which 
specially attracted him, as well as the lesson of re- 
nunciation, the distinction between knowledge and 
faith, and the thought of the unity of creation. To 
these contemplations Goethe repeatedly recurred in 
later years, and in his old age the "Ethics" was still 
by his side. 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



25 



If we seek for traces of pantheistic views in 
Goethe's writings, we are at first embarrassed by the 
necessity of defining the term Pantheism itself. Ac- 
cording to a recent English historian of this sub- 
ject, (C. E. Plumptre,) Pantheism, in the generally 
accepted meaning of the word, is the name given to 
that system of speculation which identifies the uni- 
verse with God. This explanation presents a good 
working definition, allowing the author to trace the 
presence of pantheistic ideas in various philosophic 
systems from ancient times. But much depends 
upon the manner of the identification ; and in his 
summary and conclusion Mr. Plumptre becomes more 
precise, and describes the form of pantheism which 
he has been discussing as that which, discarding 
anthropomorphism on the one hand, and naked ma- 
terialism on the other, conceives God to be a Power, 
Eternal Infinite, disclosing itself alike through every 
form and phenomenon of nature. It does not iden- 
tify God with perishable matter ; but rather con- 
ceives him to be related to matter somewhat as the 
soul is to the body. More concise is the definition 
of Dr. Hedge : " God, the creative and ruling power 
of the universe, distinguished by reason alone from 
the universe itself." In this sense Goethe, who was 
the last remove from an atheist, viewing the Finite 
only as the " living garment " of the Infinite, will be 
found fully in harmony with the spirit of Tennyson 
in his profound and beautiful poem styled "The 
Higher Pantheism." 



26 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



A discussion of the many proofs of this view 
which Goethe's works afford, would carry us far into 
Goethe's manhood and old age. One illustration 
only may perhaps be permitted, from the "Proce- 
mion," in 1816 : — 

" Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse, 
Ihm zieint's die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, 
Natur in sich, sicli in Natur zu liegen, 
So dass, was in ihm lebt und webt und ist, 
Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vermisst." 

The ante-Weimar days witness only the beginnings 
of Goethe's growing interest in Spinoza's ethical and 
pantheistic theories, and of the irreconcilable con- 
flict thereby induced between Jacobi and himself; but 
we are able to pick out from his letters and reviews 
of that period, from " Werther," and from those por- 
tions of " Faust" which evidence an early origin, 
fragmentary but significant passages which bear wit- 
ness to this interest. It was his unfinished drama 
of " Prometheus," indeed, which, containing seeds of 
Spinozism, incidentally occasioned the famous col- 
loquy between Lessing and Jacobi upon Spinoza, 
rousing an extended controversy regarding Lessing's 
opinions; — a controversy from which the serious 
study of Spinoza, and the important philosophic 
conclusions which proceeded from that study, are 
considered to date. 

We have reserved till now any mention of the 
work which Goethe is said to have rated next to 
"Faust," — "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers." 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



27 



Shakespeare has been quoted by Doctor Bartol as 
describing the phenomenon of sleep-walking in Lady 
Macbeth better than any modern physiologist; and 
recently a prominent German professor of psychiatry 
has gravely analyzed Goethe's work as an accurate 
pathological study of a diseased mind. Werther in- 
deed was an illustration, somewhat over-wrought, of 
his time. He is the super-sensitive soul, whom the 
rough world only bruises instead of bracing. Dis- 
appointment in love, combined with a social affront 
which cripples his ambition, proves too heavy a bur- 
den, and he turns his back upon the world and seeks 
in suicide an escape. The weak side of Werther — 
the unhealthy sentimentality in place of healthy sen- 
timent — is specially repugnant to the present age, 
which is schooled to control, if not to conceal, its emo- 
tions ; and although the pure and powerful fancy, the 
righteous wrath against social shams, the warm affec- 
tion for nature, are fascinating traits in the work to 
this day, no sound mind can peruse the narration 
without a continuing inward remonstrance and im- 
patience. This feeling, however, extends not so 
much to Werther as a creation as to Werther as a 
character. But it was precisely because Wertherism 
was then so common a psychological phenomenon 
that the work gained so enormous a success. The 
mirror was held up to human nature, and the distorted 
likeness was at once recognized. The personal expe- 
riences upon which the story was based are now com- 
mon property, and it will scarcely be necessary to 



28 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



describe in detail the framework of society in which 
the story is set. The Storm and Stress period forms 
the background, a period whose leading characteristics 
indeed are peculiar to no special time or place. In 
its limited application to the last third of the eigh- 
teenth century in Germany, the movement which 
this phrase describes was a general revolt against 
conventionality and the restraints of oppressive 
authority, both in society and in letters. Herder 
and Goethe are the leaders in literature, the for- 
mer as a pioneer in criticism, the latter as the 
embodiment of the poetic spirit. Goethe feels the 
far-reaching, penetrating agitation, and through his 
soul quiver and thrill the subtle and potent forces 
which are at work to fashion the coming era. He 
gathers up the tangled threads of life, and weaves 
them into a brilliant tapestry of song and tale and 
drama, which faithfully depict the universal fortunes 
of mankind. So Goethe required first experience 
before he might poetically create. But not solely in 
order to create. He was receptive, ardent, impres- 
sionable, blending warmth of heart with strength of 
intellect. To the younger Goethe, as well as to the 
elder Goethe, sweet human intercourse, encourage- 
ment, and sympathy were needful. Solitude, save for 
brief intervals, he could not suffer. He knew little 
of those heights of loneliness on which the impatient 
soul of Lessing was so often forced to dwell. For 
even if his mental outlook was far wider than the 
glance of most of his associates could comprise, even 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



29 



if he had often to endure bitter criticism and personal 
hostilities, his motives and his aims alike misunder- 
stood, he was also assured of ample appreciation, aid, 
and applause. 

Thus he rounds out his first quarter of a century. 
The principal features of his youthful prime we have 
here endeavored briefly to sketch, indicating the vari- 
ous influences which shaped or modified his course, 
and outlining his multifarious mental activity. We 
have found him in his youth already a perfect lyric 
poet; for all that follows, — the luxuriant elegiacs, the 
fresh and natural ballads, the splendid harmonies of 
" Gott und Welt," the tender, melancholy yearning of 
Mignon, the melodious Oriental imageries, the elabo- 
rate elegies of Marienbad, the numberless variations of 
the Faust stanza,— is but a differing manifestation of 
the same spirit ; we find him already penning a warm 
and vigorous prose, which, pruned and perfected, is to 
become the standard of modern German ; we find him 
as the author of "Gotz" already vying with Klopstock 
in arousing a national sentiment in the German mind 
by restoring to his countrymen a consciousness of 
their manly past; as an essayist and reviewer, we find 
him already laboring to rebuke vain wordiness and 
false or artificial canons of taste, to unfetter the judg- 
ment and to awaken a catholic sympathy ; already in 
"Werther" 

" He took the suffering human race, 
He read each wound, each weakness clear, 
And struck his finger on the place, 
And said, Thou ailest here and here.'* 



80 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



And finally his masterpiece of " Faust " is growing 
under his touch and gaining some of its rarest pas- 
sages. Thus endowed with this potent promise of 
his brilliant past, we leave him at Weimar, on the 
threshold of his long and beneficent career in that 
his final home. 



APPENDIX TO "GOETHE'S YOUTH." 

In order to convey some idea of the peculiarities 
of Goethe's youthful style, the exact text of the 
letter from which the extract on page 6 has been 
translated is here given : — 

An Joh. Jacob Eiese in Frankfurt. 

Leipzig 20. Oktober 1764. 
Morgens um 6. 

Eiese, guten Tag ! 

den 21. Abends um 5. 

Eiese, guten Abend ! 

Gestern hatte ich mich kaum hingesetzt um euch eine 
Stunde zu widmen, Als schnell ein Brief von Horn kam 
und mich von meinem angefangnen Blate hinweg riss. 
Heute werde ich auch nicht langer bey euch bleiben. 
Ich geh in die Commoedie. Wir haben sie recht schon 
hier. Aber dennoch ! Ich binn unschliissig ! Soil ich 
bey euch bleiben? Soil ich in die Commodie gehn? — 
Ich weiss nicht ! Geschwind ! Ich will wiirfeln. Ja 
ich habe keine Wiirfel ! — Ich gehe ! Lebt wohl ! — 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



31 



Doch halte ! nein ! ich will da bleiben. Morgen kann 
ich wieder nicht da muss ich ins Colleg, und Besuchen 
und Abends zu Gaste. Da will ich also jetzt schreiben. 
Meldet mir was ihr fur ein Leben lebt 1 Ob ihr manch- 
mahl an mich denkt. Was ihr fur Professor habt. & 
cetera und zwar ein langes & cetera. Ich lebe hier, wie 
— wie — ich weiss selbst nicht recht wie. Doch so 
ohngefahr 

So wie ein Vogel, der auf einem Ast 

Im schonsten Wald, sich, Freiheit athmend wiegt. 

Der ungestort die sanfte Luft geniesst. 

Mit seinen Fittichen von Baum zu Baum 

von Bussch zu Bussch sich singend hinzuschwingen. 

Genug stellt euch ein Vogelein, auf einem griinen 
Aestelein in alien seinen Freuden fur, so leb ich. Heut 
hab ich angefangen Collegia zu horen. 

Was fur 1 — 1st es der Miihe wehrt zu fragen % Institu- 
tions imperiales. Historiam iuris. Pandectas und ein 
privatissimum iiber die 7 ersten und 7 letzten Titel des 
Codicis. Denn mehr braucht man nicht, das iibrige 
vergisst sich doch. Nein gehorsamer Diener ! das lies- 
sen wir schon unterwege. — Im Ernste ich habe heute 
zwei Collegen gehort, die Staatengeschichte bey Professor 
Bohmer, und bei Ernesti iiber Cicerons Gesprache vom 
Eedner. Nicht wahr das ging an. Die andere Woche 
geht Collegium philosophicum et mathematicum an. — 

Gottscheden hab ich noch nicht gesehen. Er hat 
wieder geheurathet. Eine Jfr. Obristleutnantin. Ihr 
wisst es doch. Sie ist 19 und er 65 Jahr. Sie ist 4 
Schue gross und er 7. Sie ist mager wie ein Haring und 
er dick wie ein Federsack. — Ich mache hier grosse 
Figur ! — Aber noch zur Zeit bin ich kein Stutzer. Ich 



32 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



werd es auch nicht. — Ich brauche Kunst urn fleissig zu 
sein. In Gesellschaften, Concert, Comoedie, bei Gaste- 
reyen, Abendessen, Spazierfahrten so viel es urn diese 
Zeit angeht. Ha ! das geht kostlich. Aber auch kost- 
lich, kostspielig. Zum Henker das fiihlt mein Beutel. 
Halt ! rettet ! haltet auf ! Siehst du sie nicht mehr flie- 
gen % Da marschierten 2 Louisdor. Helft ! da ging eine. 
Himmel ! schon wieder ein paar. Groschen die sind hier, 
wie Kreuzer bei euch draussen im Beiche. — Aber den- 
noch kann hier einer sehr wohlfeil leben. Die Messe ist 
herum. Und ich werde recht menageus leben. Da hoffe 
ich des Jahrs mit 300 Bthr. was sage ich mit 200 Bthr. 
auszukommen. NB. das nicht mitgerechnet, was schon 
zum Henker ist. Ich habe kostbaaren Tissch. Merkt 
einmahl unser Kiichenzettel. Hiiner, Gansse, Truthah- 
nen, Endten, Bebhiiner, Schnepfen, Feldhiiner, Forellen, 
Hassen, Wildpret, Hechte, Fasanen, Austern u. s. w. Das 
erscheinet Taglich. nichts von anderm groben Fleisch 
ut sunt Bind, Kalber, Hamel u. s. w. das weiss ich nicht 
mehr wie es schmeckt. Und die Herrlichkeiten nicht 
teuer, gar nicht teuer. — Ich sehe, dass mein Blat bald 
voll ist und es stehen noch keine verse darauf, ich habe 
deren machen wollen. Auf ein andermahl. Sagt Keh- 
ren dass ich ihm schreiben werde. Ich hore von Horn, 
dass ihr euch ob absentiam puellarum forma elegantium 
beklagt. Lasst euch von ihm das Urteil sagen dass ich 
iiber euch fallete. 

Goethe. 

In a letter to his friend Schonborn, consul in 
Algeria, occurs a noteworthy passage in turbulent 
praise of Herder: — 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



33 



Frankfurt am 8. Jun. [1774.] 

Herder hat ein Werk drueken lassen : Aelteste Ur- 
kunde des Menschengeschlechts. Ich hielt meinen Brief 
inne um Ihnen auch Ihr Theil iibers Meer zu schicken, 
noch aber bin ichs nicht im Stande, es ist eiu so raystisch 
weitstrahlsinniges Gauze, eine in der Eiille verschlungener 
Geaste lebende und rollende Welt, dass weder eine Zeich- 
nung nach verjiingtem Maasstab einigen Ausdruck der 
Eiesengestalt nachaffen, oder eine treue Silhouette einzel- 
ner Theile melodisch sympathetischen Klang in der Seele 
anschlagen kann. Er ist in die Tiefen seiner Empfindung 
hinabgestiegen, hat drinn alle die hohe heilige Kraft der 
simpeln Natur aufgewiihlt und flihrt sie nun in dammern- 
dem, wetterleuchtendem hier und da morgenfreundlich 
lachelnden, Orphischen Gesang vom Aufgang herauf iiber 
die weite Welt, nachdem er vorher die Lasterbrut der 
neuern Geister, De- und Atheisten, Philologen, Textver- 
besserer, Orientalisten etc. mit Feuer und Schwefe] und 
Fluthsturm ausgetilget ! 



Appended is a short bibliography of works relating 
to Goethe's youth. 

General Subject. 

Der junge Goethe. Seine Briefe und Dichtungen von 
1764-1776. Mit einer Einleitung von Michael Bernays. 
3 Theile. Leipzig, 1875. 

Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit. Mit Einleitung 
und Anmerkungen von G. von Loeper. 4 Theile. Berlin, 
1879. 

3 



34 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Briefe und Aufsatze von Goethe aus den Jahren 1766 
bis 1786. Zum erstenmal herausgegeben durch A. Scholl. 
Weimar, 1846. 

Deutschlands politische, materielle und sociale Zu- 
stande im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Von Karl Bieder- 
mann. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1854-1880. 

Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im achtzehn- 
ten Jahrhundert. Von Hermann Hettner. 3 Biicher. 
Zweite Auflage. Braunschweig, 1872. 

Goethe. Vorlesungen gehalten an der Kgl. Universit'at 
zu Berlin von Herman Grimm. Zweite durchgesehene 
Auflage. Berlin, 1880. [Translated by Sarah Holland 
Adams. Boston : Little, Brown, & Co., 1881.] 

Goethe's Leben von H. Diintzer. Leipzig, 1880. [Trans- 
lated by T. W. Lyster. Macmillan, London, 1883, and 
Estes and Lauriat, Boston.] 

Goethe in den Jahren 1771 bis 1775. Von Bernhard 
Eudolf Abeken. Zweite Auflage. Hannover, 1865. 

Werther und seine Zeit. Zur Goethe-Literatur. Von 
J. W. Appell. Neue Ausgabe. Leipzig, 1865. 

Aus Goethes Friihzeit. Von Wilhelm Scherer. [Quel- 
len und Forschungen xxxiv.] Strassburg, 1879. 

Goethe's Werther und seine Zeit. Eine psychiatrisch- 
litterarische Studie von Prof. Dr. Ludwig Wille. Basel, 
1877. 

Herder. 

Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken darge- 
stellt von R. Haym. 1. Bd. Berlin, 1877. 

Herders Lebensbild. Sein chronologisch-geordneter 
Briefwechsel. Herausgegeben von seinem Sohne. 3 Bde. 
Erlangen, 1846. 



GOETHE'S YOUTH. 



35 



Aus Herders Nachlass. 3 Bde. Frankfurt am Main, 
1857-1858. 

Herder. By Karl Hillebrand. U". A. Beview, July and 
October, 1872, April, 1873. Vol. CXV. pp. 104-138, 
235-287, 389-424. (Preprinted in part as Monograph 
IV. Bangor, Me.) 

Friederike Brion. 

Der junge Goethe. (Letters and Poems in Vol. I.) 

Dichtung und Wahrheit. (Books 10, 11, and 12.) 

Friederike Brion von Sessenheim. Geschichtliche Mit- 
theilungen von Phil. Ferd. Lucius, Pfarrer in Sessen- 
heim. Strassburg, 1877. 

Friederike Brion von Sesenheim. (1752-1813.) Eine 
chronologisch bearbeitete Biographie nach neuem Mate- 
rial aus dem Lenz-Nachlasse. Von P. Th. Falck. Ber- 
lin, 1884. 

Deutsche Rundschau, November, 1878, pp. 218-226 : 
Wallfahrt nach Sesenheim. Von Heinrich Kruse. 

Goethe's Youthful Reviews. 

Der junge Goethe. Vol. II. pp. 405-504. 

Studien liber Goethe von Professor Wilhelm Scherer in 
Berlin. Der junge Goethe als Journalist. [In the 
Deutsche Kundschau, October, 1878, pp. 62-74.] 

Goethe's Religious Views. 

"Der junge Goethe " and " Dichtung und Wahrheit," 
passim. 

[For the later period, see his works in general. Note 
specially Sarah Austin's " Characteristics of Goethe : from 



36 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the German of Falk, von Miiller, etc.," (3 vols., London, 
1849,) Vol. L pp. 65-103. Also, " Gesprache mit Goethe 
in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. Yon J. P. Ecker- 
mann. Sechste Auflage. (Edited by Diintzer.) In drei 
Theilen." (Leipzig, 1885.) II. 30, 100-101, 200; III. 
253-258. In Bonn's translation, pp. 54-55 (passage 
suppressed by translator), 411-412, 524-525, 566-570.] 

Goethe's Stellung zum Christenthum. Von Julian 
Schmidt. (In the Goethe-Jahrbuch, II., 1881, pp. 49- 
64.) 

Der Gang der Kirche in Lebensbildern dargestellt von 
K. Fr. Aug. Kahnis. Leipzig, 1881. (pp. 410-426 :. 
Goethe und das Christenthum.) 

Goethes religiose Entwickelung bis zum Jahre 1775. 
Von R. Fr. A. Jobst. (Programm.) Stettin, 1877. 

Spinoza and Pantheism. 

Benedicti de Spinoza Opera quae supersunt omnia. 3 
vols, and supplementary vol. (1862). Lipsiae, 1843. 

[Spinoza's Works are translated into English in the 
Bohn series.] 

Spinoza's Ethic. Translated by W. H. White. Lon- 
don, 1883. 

Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy. By Frederick Pol- 
lock. London, 1880. 

Ways of the Spirit, and other Essays. By F. H. 
Hedge. Boston, 1877. [pp. 252-284: Pantheism.] 

General Sketch of the History of Pantheism. By C. E. 
Plumptre. 2 vols. London, 1881. 

Scholl, (v. sup*a,) pp. 193-229. 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



37 



n. 

GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 

By JOHN ALB EE. 

The theory of education at present is to offer an 
all-embracing outline of studies, from which every 
talent may select, may specialize itself, and receive 
its appropriate training. Universal culture, that is, 
knowing or affecting a variety of intellectual inter- 
ests, is not now much encouraged, and is seldom mar- 
ketable. Even the phrases, " a great scholar," " a 
learned man," have ceased to carry their ancient sig- 
nificance. And the opponents of classical studies 
would say it is well it is so ; for the terms meant an 
acquaintance with Greek and Latin and the contents 
of libraries merely. Scholar, learned man, do not 
well describe the modern proficient, their successor, 
whose claim and place can be exactly defined when 
one inquires, " What does he know ? " This was 
sometimes a difficult question to answer in the case 
of the former class, when one praised them and pro- 
voked curiosity and inquiry. The answer was as 
vague and general as the supposed accomplishments. 
Universal culture we no longer encourage in the indi- 
vidual ; in the accumulation of studies, in their clear 



38 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



demarkations and the demand for thoroughness, there 
is required a more or less close following of par- 
ticular lines. Universal culture must now be con- 
fined in meaning to the possibilities, or opportunities, 
embraced within the plans and under the teachers 
everywhere offered, and to their distributed results. 
The education now most insisted upon is that which 
qualifies a man to maintain himself by his usefulness 
to others, — to possess and to be able to apply that 
knowledge which has its practical value and its equiv- 
alent money value, like any other commodity. You 
may know too little to be wanted anywhere by any- 
body ; and you may know too much to meet the 
wants of sagacious employers. 

The bounds of knowledge — to sum up what has 
been said and to make clearer what follows — have 
been so extended, and the demand for application is 
so strenuous, that only by devotion to one single de- 
partment can a man hope for any degree of complete- 
ness or usefulness. 

At the same time, this accomplishment in one 
thing, with its professional or private application, 
gives to its disciple a limited development which 
is not in harmony with the highest philosophical or 
spiritual revelations of the being and aim of man. 
For man is a unit, a whole, in himself, whatsoever 
component place he may consent to fill temporarily 
and with a detached portion of his being. He wishes 
to know all, grasps at all. He can learn all ; but he 
* can teach, can communicate, only a part. Now all 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



89 



that which cannot be taught, but which ever) 7 earnest, 
striving spirit wishes to know and succeeds in know- 
ing through his own power and will, and in his own 
way, that is, as his genius guides him, I call self- 
culture. And inasmuch as I speak of Goethe's self- 
culture, I am anxious that my definition should be 
considered, in a peculiar manner, as applicable to 
him, for it has grown out of a study of his life and 
activities. I hope it is capable of generalization, and 
useful to every one who has taken his education, his 
cultivation, into his own hands ; but it is beyond 
the scope of this paper to make applications and 
draw the obvious moral. It is simply the way 
which one man, already by natural endowment great, 
found to supplement a usual education, such as was 
available in his youth, to pass from known and dis- 
covered ground to original, and to satisfy the impulse 
of his genius. Nor do I wish to lower or confuse the 
definition of self-culture, by connecting it in any 
manner with the history or experience of those com- 
monly called self-educated men, of whom we have 
enough and hear enough ; men who struggle up out 
of the masses, and who are sufficiently honored and 
wondered at for their striving and their triumph. 
Self-culture as now to be considered must be held up 
and measured upon the Goethean plan ; and as the 
sermon ever and anon comes back to its text and the 
song to its refrain, so must we to the definition, which 
is to be the clue in studying one chief characteristic 
of Goethe: all that which cannot be taught, but 



40 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



which every earnest, striving spirit wishes to know 
and succeeds in knowing through his own power and 
will and in his own way, — that is, as his genius 
guides him, — is self-culture ; and Goethe is the 
eminent and peculiar example of it, and of its most 
extraordinary results. 

It is hard to keep hold of Goethe as a whole, he 
turns himself in so many different directions. And 
who is competent to estimate a man who was poet, 
novelist, art critic, translator, editor, lawyer and coun- 
cillor of state, dramatist, stage manager and actor, 
the most voluminous correspondent we know of, — 
over nine thousand letters known to be now procura- 
ble, and one half of them already published, — besides 
his special scientific pursuits in botany, mineralogy, 
anatomy, and optics ? To some of these departments 
he added valuable contributions; in some he made 
original discoveries, and his literary work has become 
already the property of mankind. All the while, 
as we read his life as known to the persons among 
whom he moved, his diaries and letters, we are struck 
with the attention and time bestowed on private and 
official concerns, which could leave no profitable re- 
sults, and which would seem to interfere with the 
concentration requisite for enduring performances. 
But for the explanation of the amount and quality 
of his literary legacy, we must study his character- 
istic literary methods; and in addition, remember 
his fortunate circumstances and his long life, pro- 
ductive to the end. 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



41 



It is claimed, and it is a valid claim, that Goe- 
the's life and work make an epoch in world history. 
Whether we know it or not, we now see through his 
eyes when we come to certain points in our studies 
and experiences. And although unable, and indeed 
incompetent, as most men are, to follow and appre- 
ciate the whole range of his contributions, yet any 
interested and careful reader can feel everywhere 
the Goethean characteristic in his style and method ; 
and, more than all, in the comprehensive sweep of 
his mind, which looks out upon things in a large, 
infinite way, gathering as it labors on vast materials, 
overflowing in almost every instance the receptacle 
he had planned for them. He was almost too great 
and active a man to be a writer ; it is condescension 
in him to write. After the Frankfort period, he 
needed urging to prepare anything for print. He 
was indebted to his friends, and especially to Schiller, 
for stimulation in this direction. He loved to accu- 
mulate, to sketch out plans, to read to friends an 
incompleted design, and then put it away for more 
light. Thus all his work seems a means to some 
other end, — a preparation, — an exploring expedition, 
returning with abundant results, but how to be finally 
distributed and arranged, somewhat in doubt; and 
in fact it is lucky if anything more than a roof is 
erected over them. Much appears to be unfinished, 
fragmentary, all sorts of things interjected between 
the covers of his books ; and this not from want of 
good structural idea, but either because of some 



42 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



difficulty in keeping within its limits, or because he 
found no conventional literary form quite adapted to 
his peculiar genius. So he overflows in all his longer 
works ; yet in his shorter is perfectly restrained and 
unified. 

It was especially hard for Goethe to bring any of 
his more important books to end, because his accu- 
mulations were so large and continuous, and because 
he filled his writing with his life, which flowed on, 
and could only be complete by the arrest of life. 
It must also be remembered that he waited upon 
his moods, and was not independent of physical 
aids and hindrances. He used wine and love as 
stimulants, but not tobacco. He consulted the ba- 
rometer to know the weather in his brain ; and he 
knew what seasons, sleep, diet, change, and music 
could do for the mind. However, there comes a time 
when we can no more rely upon these charming 
coadjutors. The problem came to the aged Goethe 
how to complete works which for the most part had 
been thrown off in periods when his genius was sus- 
ceptible to outward influences, responding involun- 
tarily and warmly. His solution was that by which 
most men are obliged to labor from beginning to end, 
namely, to finish what needed finishing by energy 
and resolution, no longer waiting upon Muse and 
season. Still we must say that in much of Goethe's 
work there were additions rather than completions, 
and it marks a characteristic trait, the cause of w T hich 
we have already indicated. The Second Part of 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



43 



" Faust " is a completion, but not a dramatic comple- 
tion ; it is a religious reinvestment of the whole con- 
ception. The Second Part of "Wilhelni Meister" 
follows vaguely and in a lower atmosphere the same 
lines ; nothing is brought to an issue after the manner 
of ordinary fiction. In Goethe was the extraordinary 
sense of the progressive character of all that concerns 
human life ; it appears as merely succession oftenest ; 
and in either case the highest art must deal with it 
as without limitations. ISTo end is conceivable to it, 
but only transitions. Thus while Goethe lived the 
period could be, and generally was, changed into a 
semicolon ; whatsoever conclusion, it was provisional > 
ceaseless self-culture added chapter after chapter, 
rewrote, inserted missing leaves, and gave to the god 
Terminus feet and arms. There should be a dash at 
the end of most of his writings, to signify that he 
was interrupted, or was waiting for more light, a 
new experience, a fresh impulse. This intellectual 
exuberance was in part the fruit of a habit of self- 
culture, which accompanied step by step the writings 
given to the public. 

The creative power in him seems to have been 
exactly commensurate with the opportunities of self- 
culture ; and in the latter we must include, besides 
various studies, all kinds of personal contacts, expe- 
riences, and employments. These came forth again 
as images, characters, or generalizations, in poetry or 
prose, and tantalize us at once with their likeness 
and unlikeness to their originals. And it may be 



44 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



noticed in passing that he appears to reveal most of 
the germs out of which grew his literary works. It 
is true he was a little fond of mystification con- 
cerning them, and himself, doubtless, as we all do, 
connected the image created independently in the 
mind with some material, actual counterpart sub- 
sequently. This, otherwise, is to give to what we 
call real existences, facts, or even experiences, too 
much credit. These have no creative power; the 
mind, the imagination, create them. We may admit 
only this : that the relation of Goethe's creations to 
their originals, or beginnings, is similar to the genesis 
of life. There is a cell of some sort ; it little resem- 
bles the final form of independent being, which at 
any other stage than this is perishable. 

Goethe was a realist in a certain distinguishing 
sense ; that is, there must be for him firm realities, 
but such as were intimately interwoven with his own 
life. He hated the vague, the subjective, and that 
which attempted to make something out of nothing. 
He strove for such a universal expression as could 
not be literally interpreted, but so flexible as to have 
in it a manifold adaptation. In some degree, favored 
by the German intellectual tendency to minute and 
critical study of masterpieces, he achieved in a short 
space that w T hieh time and chance have given his 
compeers, Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, — the pos- 
sibility of many meanings and many applications. 
He founded himself upon the internal real ; so that 
his realism differs greatly from that which among some 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



45 



writers is practised and championed in our time. 
They claim to give us pictures of life as it is, still 
calling their work fiction. Nothing that does actu- 
ally, literally exist, is worthy of portraiture. "The 
spirit of the real is the true ideal " ; and this alone 
is all that man recognizes and cherishes forever. 

There is, however, a deeper objection than this to 
the surface realism of our present literary art. In 
the moral world, as in the natural, we shall not go 
far wrong, if we seek for truth and reality in the 
direct opposite of what appears. The apparent is 
something adjusted to the measure of the senses. 
Although Goethe laid strong hold of this apparent, 
there was for once a man who turned it, not half or 
quarter, but clear round, and saw the other, the real 
spirit, or ideal face. 

He turned the plant clear round, and discovered 
its secret, the law of its life. And as ever appear- 
ances are confusing, while the reality is simple and 
satisfying, so now botany, which, when one looks 
into a text-book or upon a garden of flowers, is the 
most bewildering of studies, becomes by Goethe's 
discovery as clear and beautiful as a remembered sin- 
gle line of perfect poetry. In fact it is poetic ; and 
it distinguishes nearly all of his scientific investiga- 
tion that it is resolved into poetry. He is the first 
modern man who has well succeeded in working this 
transformation ; thus restoring for us the manner of 
the most ancient natural philosophers, who rendered 
everything in verse. It seems to have been his 



46 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



aim in natural science to satisfy the desire for a 
productive thought, — one that should be a further 
means of self-cultivation. His investigations in oste- 
ology resulted in nearly the same law as in botany, — 
a simple principle on which the structure of animals 
and plants is built up alike. What is its value ? 
Chiefly to the imagination in man. There is no final 
good in scientific discoveries unless they furnish us 
something beyond the useful ; this also has its value, 
but not the entire. As Goethe himself said, " What- 
ever is useful is only a part of what is significant." 
When a simple, pregnant generalization, like Goethe's 
in botany, is given us, we are not hindered by default 
of technical knowledge from the highest possible per- 
ception of the central idea in the plant world. We 
no more stand before the simplest flower ashamed of 
our ignorance because we cannot call it by name ; or 
when we can, satisfied with our knowledge. But 
there is now freedom for the imagination, and an 
invitation to reflection. Then truly pansies will be 
for thoughts ; and the " flower in the crannied wall " 
will answer, not what God and man is, but as much 
as it knows about itself. And though some flowers 
recommend themselves by their beauty or rarity, and 
others by their commonness, and some even because 
they are fashionable, all of them, when we are ac- 
quainted with the law of their inward being, help us 
to draw nearer to the spiritual symbols and resem- 
blances which connect each province of nature with 
every other, and all with man. 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



47 



Goethe teaches us after a method, and to a point 
where we can teach ourselves. In every direction to 
which he turned his mind, this is one of his chief 
merits, that he takes you where you can go alone if 
you will. This makes him for adults, for poets and 
writers especially, the most helpful master that has 
ever lived. How he becomes so is easy to see ; it 
is because he is trying to teach himself ; in short, 
we come again upon his self-culture as the fruit- 
ful source of his achievements and influence. His 
studies and investigations were private, unprofes- 
sional, with no worldly or ulterior aim. What he 
puts into the mouth of Makaria in " Wilhelm Meis- 
ter's Travels " expresses his habit very nearly : " We 
do not want to establish anything, or to produce any 
outward effect, but only to enlighten ourselves. ,, 
When therefore Goethe, a man of ample acquire- 
ments and genius, sits down to study something that 
he wishes to know, and gives us not only the results, 
but the steps and the method of his effort, he be- 
comes a great teacher. 

Yet we do not wish to follow any master too far ; 
he is the best who leads us from himself to self- 
reliance. A man needs many, to whose influence he 
can surrender himself, and recover himself again and 
again. In Goethe's self-cultivation it is striking how 
often he meets with persons and objects, and gives 
himself up to them until he has learned all they 
have to impart which can help him, or discovers 
his own false tendency or position. Then he aban- 



48 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



dons them without regret or apology. Without re- 
gret, except the poetic, inspiring regrets of his love 
affairs, which cannot be omitted from the account of 
the sources and circumstances of his inward culture. 
In these there were usually two productive phases 
or periods ; one while elevated by passion, the other 
when tormented by remorse. It is said by H. Grimm 
that Margaret grew out of the latter. But usually 
he had no time or taste for repenting himself of any- 
thing that had happened. In his self-complacent 
way* he foresaw compensation, and was not afflicted 
to know all sides of himself, the weak, the strong, the 
excellent, and the evil. He confessed that his striv- 
ing to become an artist was a mistake, but added 
that mistakes also give us insight. This calm, quite 
superhuman characteristic has prejudiced many good 
people against Goethe ; they think that he sacrificed 
everybody to his own selfish purposes. The French 
call love the egoism of two ; but some say Goethe's 
love was still no more than that of one, — self-love, 
in short. 

One of the essential contrasts between Goethe and 
most literary creators — let us say, for instance, our 
own Shakespeare — is that Goethe found his mate- 
rial, his suggestions, his impulse, in his own expe- 
riences ; while Shakespeare and his contemporaries, 
and also the greater Greek poets, take what has hap- 
pened to others as the primary motive of their work. 
Goethe embodies states of feeling, workings of the 
intellect; consequently they have not that charac- 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



49 



teristic or historical consistency which is common 
among other creators. I venture to call their con- 
sistency ideal ; and I would refer its manifestations 
more to the personality of Goethe than to that of the 
characters themselves, which in most works of the 
imagination are made effective by sharply drawn 
limitations. I do not know a character of Goethe's 
that stands for much more than his mouthpiece; that 
one thinks of as a person, as in the creations of 
many even inferior novelists and dramatists. In 
truth, one may say, — or perhaps here it is better to 
inquire whether nearly all the most famous char- 
acters of poets and dramatists have not something 
vague and impersonal about them ; while it is left to 
the inferior to come before us with their impressive, 
although very limited personality. The great are 
great without being peculiar, and indeed by contrasts 
to it ; they fill a great place, symbolize the total 
conception, and must be drawn with a few and the 
simplest lines; while about them move all manner 
of subordinates, of narrower yet more striking idio- 
syncrasies. It is these latter we make ourselves free 
with ; they pass into proverb, yes, into language, and 
have the honor to become nouns and adjectives. 

Goethe wrote in the modern temple, where all the 
Muses were real women. He transformed them back 
to their ancient estate. This his temple was of glass, 
so that the transformation could be seen, the original 
clay be detected after it was winged. Doubtless 
other poets, his predecessors and compeers, also drew 



50 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



much out of their own lives, fashioning their crea- 
tions out of real, present images ; but it is concealed 
from us by our meagre information concerning their 
personal history and character. In Goethe's case all 
is open, all is revealed, by his own disclosures and 
innumerable testimonies. We know the avidity of 
the public concerning everything which connects 
personal affairs with a poem or story, — its liability to 
mistake, and its haste to censure ; and as the world 
is full of literalists, as well as of those w T ho conceive 
of all as if existing in the present and among them- 
selves, forgetful that every age " determines and fash- 
ions both the willing and unwilling," they hear of 
Goethe's relations to his time, to its persons, ideas 
on religion and politics, with some scruples of con- 
science; their most serious charge being that he 
immolated, and then dissected, living, loving human 
beings for the purposes of literary art. It should be 
remembered that, so far as Goethe's own confessions 
are summoned against him, they cannot be fully ad- 
mitted ; for he did not confess himself in print until 
the matter which entered into it had become poetry 
in its first stage. He used it over and over, and 
gave it endless additions and transformations. In 
truth, the literal experience, the actual fact, do not 
exist for a moment, or but just a moment, in his 
mind. 

In his first attempt at verse, when he was in love 
with Gretchen, he says he first " mystified himself." 
You cannot detect him writing anywhere except sym- 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



51 



bolically. Thus, in working the chief miracle given 
man to perform in his earthly life, the changing 
the water which he draws out of the common reser- 
voirs into the wine of song and story, Goethe had a 
wonderful, almost supernatural power. In tracing 
back this gift, it becomes clear that it grew out of 
his genius for self-culture. We can observe that it 
had a twofold or reciprocal character, not uncommon 
to all men, but in the highest degree to him ; namely, 
being taught by his own faculties, unconsciously at 
first, and then in return consciously and earnestly 
teaching them. It may be said, that when a man 
arrives at the latter stage, he is free ; he, by the same 
means, liberates others; he becomes a self-deter- 
mined being, and can wholly exterminate what is 
obstructive in himself, and perfect what is productive 
and best. This consciousness becomes distinct grad- 
ually; and the interesting point in Goethe's intellect- 
ual history is to observe its development. 

But now what shall we say on behalf of those 
lovely, and, as some think, wronged ladies, sacrificed 
to make the images of Gretchen, Ottilie, Iphigenia, 
Sulieka, who now seem to have an independent 
being ? Were Friederika, Lottie Buff, Lillie Schone- 
man, Von Stein, and the others, but the rough stone 
in which sleeps the statue ? or did they breathe, 
suffer, feel the chisel and polisher of the artist ? And 
which endured most, they or Goethe himself ? It is 
permitted to women to heal themselves by sensible 
attachments and marriage, which all seem to have 



52 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



done, with one exception ; while he poetized his woes. 
It is too much to expect of every man that he shall 
commit suicide to show that he was in earnest in 
love. Yet I know of no other course that would 
thoroughly satisfy the world of Goethe's sincerity 
and unhappiness. Must we, however, exercise our- 
selves in passing some kind of judgment in the 
business ? For this present, all such controversies 
must be renounced ; and once for all let us summa- 
rize the supposed defects of Goethe's nature, which, 
as comprehensive and yet condensed as we can make 
them, are religious, domestic, and political. 

In conclusion of this element in Goethe's manner 
of self-culture, that is, the embodiment in imaginary 
forms and relations of not only actual people and 
events, but as well his various internal moods, reflec- 
tions, and tendencies, I will add, that it grew into a 
habit with him to want to know, first of all, in regard 
to the productions of other writers, and even scientific 
labors, out of what kind of personal character and 
experience they had been evoked. In this, as critic 
and student, is to be observed his leaning toward the 
historical and objective method. One might sup- 
pose, after all that has been divulged respecting his 
own way of drawing from his experience and circum- 
stances, that it might properly be called the sub- 
jective method, and that he would use approvingly, 
in describing others, the same term. I shall not 
insist on the distinctions in the use of these terms 
by Goethe which I have endeavored to find ; but I 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



53 



have made the attempt in order to read his critical 
works especially, and maxims scattered all through 
his other writings, with better understanding. In 
the first place, then, there are two essentials to all 
intellectual efforts and products. These two essen- 
tials may be called by several terms ; as, broadly, 
nature and art ; or, specifically, reality and imagi- 
nation, truth and symbol, yourself and the world. 
These cannot be separated ; the objective method 
does not separate them ; but the subjective method 
undertakes to exclude, sometimes one, sometimes the 
other. To this must be added that he often em- 
ployed the term subjective in speaking of egotists, 
mannerists, and dilettants. 

The terms clilcttant and dilettanteism grew up 
alongside of this enlargement of the meaning of art 
and artist, and were the necessary negative or anti- 
thetical expressions. The looser meaning of dilet- 
tant is one who amuses himself, or cultivates not too 
seriously any art, or science, or literature, and does 
not pretend to success or excellence. He is judged 
in proportion to his intention, and we give our ap- 
plause graciously, because it is not demanded of our 
head, but our heart, in return for a casual pleasure, 
or because there has been displayed to us some 
unexpected natural, though untrained talent. 

But if the effort be serious, yet a failure ; if it 
make a demand to which we do not, cannot yield, 
then, in the usage of Goethe, Schiller, and their 
friends, the effort is dilettanteism, and the agent is a 



54 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



dilettant. In short, when one undertakes to gain 
the height, as Goethe said, through admiration of it, 
bat not the steps to it ; or feels himself from any 
impulse, inward or outward, disposed to something 
for which he has, perhaps, a little, but no effective 
talent ; there is the delineation of numberless indi- 
viduals who pretend much, who even labor industri- 
ously, yet with no praiseworthy results. However, 
we must not apply these significant words empiri- 
cally, or too harshly. We have had many single 
gifts, precious and enduring, from men of this class ; 
and we cannot forget the contributions of many 
untrained observers of nature. 

It is inevitable that Goethe must believe in recov- 
ery after never so many false steps and tendencies. 
Being men out of the earth, going through the world 
for a brief period, looking forward constantly, and in 
the crises of life upward, it is necessary we should 
make our mistakes help us. In the " Annals " of 
Goethe, which are a sort of epitome and continuation 
of the " Autobiography/' he declares that he meant in 
" Wilhelm Meister " to delineate the career of a dilet- 
tant, whose "false steps may at last conduct to an 
invaluable good." 

One word more of his manner of coming to conclu- 
sions respecting the work of other minds. We have 
recently here, in last year's study of Emerson, been led 
through various special points of view to one agreeing 
opinion, — that character was the source of his activi- 
ties, and that it is reflected in them with few reser- 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



55 



vations and no pretensions. Always, when we can 
find no clue to the private life of the great men of 
the past, we attempt to construct it out of their times, 
their contemporaries, and the whole personal environ- 
ment, as far as we can reproduce it. It was this 
objective spirit in Goethe that made him wish to 
come into the closest relations with all that interested 
him, — men, women, and nature. If there was known 
to him good fruit anywhere, he was not satisfied with 
eating, but wished also to see the tree that bore it, — 
its root, its climate, and the soil out of which it had 
grown. In this w T ay a book became to him some- 
thing more than a dry fagot of sticks from the still 
living tree ; it became an expression of life, and con- 
tributed something to his own living and reflecting 
nature. Thus he absorbed the large circle of extraor- 
dinary persons whom at first he took pains to know, 
and who at length took equal pains to make them- 
selves known to him, and to communicate whatever 
they were able. His own account of what we here 
but hint at must be given, that it may become more 
clear to the reader: — 

" From the standpoint where God and nature had been 
pleased to place me, and where, next, I did not neglect 
to exert my faculties according to my circumstances, I 
looked all about me to mark where great tendencies were 
in operation and lastingly prevailed. I, for my part, by 
study, by performances of my own, by collections and 
experiments, endeavored to reach forth towards those 
tendencies, and, faithfully toiling upwards, to the level of 



56 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the achievements I could not myself have accomplished ; 
in all simplicity, innocent of all feeling of rivalry or envy, 
with perfectly fresh and vital sense, I presumed to appro- 
priate to myself what was offered to the century by its 
best minds. My way, therefore, ran parallel with very 
many beautiful undertakings, till it would next turn 
towards others. The new accordingly was never foreign 
to me, nor was I ever in danger either of adopting it in a 
state of unpreparedness, or, by reason of old-fashioned 
prejudice, rejecting it." 

On such a text as this confession offers, one might 
gather together all the articles and story of his self- 
cultivation. On one point we must here add some- 
thing, so that we may keep in mind that results were 
never wanting to complete the full measure of this 
absorbent genius, to show that the productive kept an 
equal pace with the receptive effort. The stream of 
influences flowing to Goethe received in their passage 
the most earnest inspection ; he took up all that were 
allied in any manner wdth his nature, and bodied 
them forth again in suitable forms, enhanced by art 
and the fulness of a thus multiplied life. Often he 
personified a tendency or feeling. This design, which 
belongs more strictly to confessed allegory, ends in 
Goethe rather tamely, so far as we look for character- 
drawing. The symbolical man has a too diversified 
nature, as well as field of action. I say man, for it is 
the men in his books that generally fail to live in our 
memory as independent beings. It is quite different 
with his women ; they are simple or sensuous ; some 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE, 



57 



have the elusive feminine charm which no poet 
before has known how to depict so well; some are 
the women of mens imagination, who all in his 
writings turned out so well ; others are downright 
saints, whose spiritual introspections are graphically 
portrayed. To all these representative types he gave 
such human forms as well satisfy our love of the 
beautiful, within artistic limits. Let us listen to his 
own opinion of his women characters for a moment, 
in order to mark the difference between his creative 
method and that of the writers who draw from the 
life, and beg of us to be pleased to recognize our 
acquaintance in their gilded frames : — 

"My idea of women is not abstracted from the phe- 
nomena of actual life, but has been born within me, God 
knows how. The female characters which I have drawn 
have therefore all turned out well; they are all better 
than could be found in reality." 

Mark here the logic of the ideal method, — "there- 
fore all turned out well." Of his men it may be said 
that they are all also parts of himself, but from a very 
different realm than his women. In them there is 
more objective treatment, and yet they are not so 
distinct. But in all and each may be seen how well 
he had resolved all his materials into his own life 
before reproduction. 

Man is an imitative animal, is the received axiom 
and basis of all art. This unconscious impulse ac- 
companies, nay, is commonly the means of setting 
free, of delimiting, what is nature's particular gift to 



58 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



each man. Too often, we are aware, it is the finished 
production, the feeling raised in us by it, that we 
would at once imitate. The deep -seeing Goethe very- 
early found that not this was the true path of self- 
cultivation, and a substantial, abiding fountain of 
literary activity ; but that it might be attained with 
fortunate circumstances, by study of all previous 
conditions, and the life and art out of which great 
masters and their work had sprung, and upon which 
they had impressed themselves in return. So from 
early life he began to grasp and to imitate, not the 
finished works themselves, which would have re- 
sulted only in something less than his models and 
ended in disgust, but the foundations and elementary 
conditions of a rich, self-developing, and continuous 
mental activity. This was why he was so recep- 
tive; and being so became many-sided without the 
usual fatality of accomplishing nothing to justify the 
name. He was, in truth, both actively and passively 
many-sided. 

But now it should be noted with what certainty 
he drew back from influences and studies when they 
threatened to absorb and restrict him. It seems as 
though he looked upon them all as but preparatory ; 
a means of cultivation, not an end in themselves. 
And his peculiar genius led him on to know many 
things up to a certain limit, rather than the one 
which always flatters the specialist that it is with- 
out limit, because it has obtained possession of him 
rather more than he has of it. What was this limit 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



59 



which Goethe observed? Spinoza had shown him 
the boundary of investigation in respect to divine 
things ; which, it has been often said, had a power- 
ful and soothing influence upon his reflections. 
Whether 'it was that early impress, or a native ten- 
dency, the limit of the surrender of his mind and 
interest was reached when the method, the how, of 
nature had been reached, and when the next step 
would involve a recourse to metaphysics to resolve 
the wherefore. 

In a similar manner, in all which he denominated 
Art he stopped short at the vague, the inexpressible, 
and the subjective. Even the romantic he thought 
no adequate expression, because it confused the moral 
and artistic sense. He must work where there was 
reality, freedom, such as the Greek outline denotes ; 
and upon that which was not already a shadowy and 
uncertain symbol, but so universal and inevitable 
that it could be symbolized in a thousand pleasing 
and instructive ways. Many a time he abandons 
himself to a mood ; seldom to the formal choice of 
poetic theme ; and he believes that the occasional 
poem, the fruit of the former, is our best modern 
poetry, while the latter labors in a vacuum. He 
yields to personal influences, intellectual and passion- 
ate, until they become noxious and are likely to sub- 
merge his individuality. And he follows the study 
of natural sciences as far as the human senses, un- 
aided by microscope, scalpel, laboratory, and prism, 
can penetrate. .Artificial contrivances introduce arti- 



60 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



ficial relations. But the chief objection, from the 
standpoint of Goethe's self-culture (which would co- 
ordinate the visible world with man), to the techni- 
cal and mechanical methods of investigation, is again 
this, to which I have already alluded; namely, that 
in science and in philosophy we should not attempt 
to search the inaccessible, the great mystery, but 
keep ourselves on the hither side, where we can labor 
fearlessly and to some purpose. This, one may well 
say, is a poet's doctrine ; since it gives up one world 
to his sharpest outward senses, and consecrates the 
other to the imagination. In Germany more than 
anywhere else, in Goethe's time, such a belief ap- 
peared as the natural reaction from the innumerable 
attempts of philosophers and theologians to formulate 
systems which should explain by ratiocination what, 
having been long accepted by faith, was beginning 
to be shaken by those inquiries that we now stand 
in the full stream of. A great deal in " Faust" has 
a symbolic or ironical reference to the current dis- 
cussions. These discussions were bold and vehe- 
ment, and went so near the verge of profanity that 
a man of Goethe's sense of proportion reacted against 
them. Fichte's conclusion of one of his lectures, 
whether true or false, hits off the height of the fash- 
ion of philosophical agitation: "To-morrow, gentle- 
men, I shall create God." 

I have said that Goethe disliked all mechanical 
contrivances for extending the reach of the five hu- 
man senses. It is well known how much he inter- 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



61 



ested himself in the theory of colors. He came in 
the course of his investigations more near to being 
moved off his usual calm balance than by any other 
affair of his life. His theory was not accepted, and 
still is not, save by a few men. Yet who would 
know Goethe must know it ; for even in its supposed 
errors is more clearly shown than in his accepted 
scientific observations the longing for, the immense 
faith in, the unity of Nature and the simplicity of her 
operations. In optics, as in other pursuits, he would 
have no aids but the natural eye ; and his chief dis- 
trust in Newton's theory of colors came from that 
philosopher's use of the prism in experiments. There 
is here a curious coincidence in sentiment between 
Goethe and Keats, which seems to reveal the poetic 
temperament the same in two otherwise infinitely 
different natures. 

One day, at a merry meeting of poets and artists in 
London, Keats proposed the toast, " Confusion to the 
memory of Newton." Charles Lamb refused to drink 
until it had been explained. " Because," said Keats, 
" he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing 
it to a prism." 

Nature, as if to reward the poet who would toler- 
ate no mediatory artifices for access to her mysteries, 
endowed him with a natural second-sight. Still he 
must deliver what he saw by symbol. Thus were 
both nature and art satisfied. 

The unity of Nature was an early vision, and the 
last supreme certainty of his old age. This, being 



62 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



well established in him, became an active, efficient 
idea. The apparent manifold parts and diverse man- 
ifestations of Nature being but adaptations of her- 
self to external mutual conditions, every one was the 
symbol of the other ; and the typical form was that 
which self-culture and art should bend themselves to 
produce. 

We left behind one Goethean characteristic, of 
which some mention should be made* This was his 
special studies as a means of self-culture, rather than 
" for the purpose of becoming a specialist. Just as he 
released himself from personal influences when he 
found them like to be overpowering or barren, so in 
studies he stopped at the point where it would be 
necessary for going on with one to give up all the 
others. Had his inclination been other, he would 
have become a learned professor, or a great author- 
ity in minerals, anatomy, and botany ; or a poet and 
only a poet. But he never could lose himself in 
anything. Perhaps one of the reasons of this, besides 
the motive of self-culture, was, that though a poet 
and much else/he was also a critic. Indeed, the chief 
limitation of Goethe's temperament is, that reflection 
interferes too much and too often with spontaneity. 
As he grew older, he became more and more di- 
dactic and Orphic. The early fruitage and flowers 
had been plucked ; he now began to harvest the 
seed-corn. There is something in the oracular wis- 
dom of his maturity which resembles the poetic 
effect, but we miss the morning-red. The da3monic 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



63 



influences of his youth are in abeyance; they are 
in his cabinets now, strung upon wires. They are 
moved at length by determination and energy, and 
help him to complete his unfinished works, where 
they reappear disembodied and passionless. The 
apotheosis of that which had lived in him, all glow- 
ing, sensitive, creative, took place. 

Although much given to symbolizing throughout 
all periods of his life, and to a reliance upon moods 
and circumstances, as well as a secret leaning toward 
poetic superstitions, presentiments and omens, in 
general he held firmly to realities, and insisted that 
divining-rods could only be found on the tree of 
knowledge. As the closing result of these two 
tendencies he became in prose didactic ; and in 
poetry, there being for him not much else left to 
undertake, he attempts to reveil symbols in a deeper 
mystery. In this he still adhered to his life-long 
habit of leaving one world to action and reflection, 
the other to invention and imagination. In the 
former, his treatment and subjects are various and 
suggestive ; in the latter, there are plentiful master- 
pieces, ample invitations to study. We can make 
personal applications here and there. Yes, it is 
plain that Goethe foresaw the needs of this genera- 
tion, and left some sealed, almost personal messages. 
These are, I dare say, such as most would vouch 
Goethe never intended. But a reader who finds no 
more in any book than the writer intended is a poor 
reader, or he is reading a poor book. A good book 



64 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



is the author plus the reader. I say this by way of 
preparation for the inevitable questionings which 
must arise in the coming week as to whether Goethe 
intended all that we shall hear from our speakers in 
their interpretations. We shall hear profitably w T hat 
each one finds in which we can all agree. For the 
rest, the unconscious element, that is in every great 
work of man's mind, it lies before us like a friendly, 
rich banquet, where there is enough for all and 
something for every taste. This unconscious ele- 
ment is no doubt an extensive portion of Goethe, 
and especially fascinating as it appears in every sort 
of figurative form. Never believe that in Goethe 
you are getting your truth without poetry. The 
naked truth is verily naked, and had better remain 
in the bottom of its traditional well. Give to it its 
relations, its adaptations, put it into action and 
thought, and as it is a liberating, divine thing, it 
clothes itself in joyful, beautiful forms, and becomes 
poetry. The higher the truth, the more poetic; and 
all men prefer illumination, the opening of the in- 
tellectual and spiritual sense, to any other light. 
For it takes them out of their limitations, which 
higher truth challenges as facts. These a low, 
earth-dwelling understanding has erected into in- 
stitutions, social, religious, political, which our study 
of Goethe may expose and help us to resist. 

The sacred treasure, the accumulation of a long 
life of activity, upon which Goethe turned constantly 
reflection and imagination in due proportions and 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



65 



with an infallible discrimination, has been handed on 
to us in various vessels; some translucent, always 
visible ; some to be seen only in the night, like the 
castle of Avallon, by the light of certain stars, reck- 
oned lucky in the horoscope of the beholder, under 
which his vision is clearer in some seasons and 
epochs of life than at others. To speak without 
metaphor, if we live, experience, suffer, love, and 
think, we come in succession to pages of Goethe 
where, having once been dark, we now find he has 
left a lamp burning for us ; like a friendly host, 
who divined better than ourselves the hour of our 
arrival. 

As we have said, the unity of nature was Goethe's 
constant perception ; every seeming diversity but 
adaptation, in whose processes are all the semblances 
of motive, cunning contrivance, sympathy, sex, moth- 
erly forethought, as in the cotyledonous leaf, love of 
beauty and final purpose. It appears to me he took 
a lesson here ; yielding himself, like a plant, to the 
external conditions of mans world. But then he 
reversed the operation, and made all conform to an 
inward shaping mind. Herein we come to that 
which distinguishes man from plants and animals, 
and also, it must be said, man from man ; one liv- 
ing wholly in the external, and forever guided and 
moulded by it ; another receiving it, but reacting 
upon it, and impressing his own inward being in 
typical forms that draw us from the fashion that 
passeth away to the permanent and true. 

5 



66 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Self-culture, therefore, by means of the external 
surrender and the internal shaping, is a good part 
of the philosophy and religion of Goethe. To sepa- 
rate them is a sin in literary ethics, and is to want 
the philosophical substructure of all creative liter- 
ary art. 

It was in delineating these two aspects of man's 
nature and destiny, morally considered, that he found 
man's greatest good and w T orst evil. Meister blun- 
ders, Faust sins, in the endeavor to satisfy themselves 
with the external world, — to conquer, to possess it. 
All along they are not sinners, but exceedingly desir- 
ous of wisdom by means of self-cultivation ; but they 
have taken wrong roads. This, then, their bungling 
was their error. And as in Faust we have a new 
sort of devil, so in Meister we have a new kind of 
sinner ; both much needed to instruct and convict the 
modern world, hotly in pursuit of every means, cul- 
ture included, to possess itself of external advantages, 
to live more splendidly on the surface, to feel, like 
the fly on the wheel, that they cause all the move- 
ment and the dust. Our age had outgrown the inter- 
pretations of the good parish priest ; Satan did not 
embody for us any wickedness with which we were 
practically acquainted, and most vulgar sins were 
provided for by the law. We needed a more subtle, 
refined, and familiar devil to affright us, and a cor- 
rected catalogue of those errors in which w^e were 
involved, scarcely however knowing it, because long 
without prophets. Goethe came, and having first 



GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 



67 



taught and saved himself, in a manner demanded by 
modern life, he then left us the method and the 
useful precepts. 

When we use the words sin and devil, the implica- 
tion is too often of some outward act or some incar- 
nation of it ; when we find it in French, we suspect a 
woman not far off. In Goethe it is a little nearer ; it 
has many marks, many metonymic names ; but false 
tendencies and vague, and impatience, negation, ego- 
tism are some of them. The great human effort and 
act is renunciation ; the final issue, reconciliation. 
For these self-culture in its broadest meaning is the 
instrument and preparation, and its purpose justifies 
its means, 

Whenever the nations of the ISTorth, and especially 
the Teutonic, have reached certain stages in civiliza- 
tion, they have been bowed down under the feeling 
that there was something wrong in the universe, 
which it was their mission to set right. Goethe was 
born into a chaotic time, when this feeling was at 
its height throughout Europe. He was endowed by 
nature with a highly organized being, susceptible to 
every impression, to such a degree that he cherished 
superstitions in regard to it. As great care is taken 
that those who can suffer shall, he felt to the full 
the maladies of his age. He wrought his own cure 
first, by self-culture, there being no outward helps ; 
then he turned to the relief of others, and became 
the great intellectual and spiritual physician of man- 
kind. 



68 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



III. 

GOETHE'S TITANISM. 

V 

By THOMAS DAVIDSON. 

Two things become clear to men as they advance 
in spiritual life : first, that there is no rest for the 
soul anywhere save in the Absolute and Infinite ; and, 
second, that this rest can be attained only by the per- 
sistent and heroic efforts of the soul itself. Although 
the facts corresponding to these truths are eternal, 
although the life of the soul, unconscious as well as 
conscious, is a striving toward the Absolute and Infi- 
nite through infinite evolution, the truths themselves 
come but slowly and late into consciousness, and the 
former comes much earlier than the latter. Indeed, 
the former has been impressed by all the great world- 
religions, as well as by some of the great world-phi- 
losophies, whereas the latter is in many quarters, 
even of the civilized world, counted little less than 
blasphemy. Looking merely at the Western world, 
we find that, in the religion of ancient Greece, the 
greatest impiety of which a man could be guilty was 
or insubordination ; that is, any intent or en- 
deavor to place himself on an equality with the gods. 
This we find forcibly illustrated, not only in the 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



69 



myths regarding the Titans, but also in those related 
of Tantalus, Ixion, Mobe, etc. To the Greeks, as to 
the Hebrews, the divine powers are jealous, standing 
upon their rights and claiming unquestioning obe- 
dience, after the manner of Oriental despots. The 
heaven, as Aristotle hints, is always a copy of the 
earth, and men's gods are never very much better 
than themselves. No doubt, both in Greece and in 
J udeea, there were men who had a nobler and truer 
conception of the Divine Power, and this conception 
finally attained currency in that powerful movement 
called, after its chief promoter, Christianity. Jesus, 
" being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to 
be equal with God ; " or, as the revised version has it, 
• - being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to 
be on an equality with God." More clearly expressed, 
this means that Jesus, though essentially deiform, held 
that equality with God was not a thing to be obtained 
by robbery. 

It was a great step for men to have come to recog- 
nize that they were deiform, and still a greater step 
to have realized that that form could be actualized, 
and that they might be perfect, even as the Father 
which is in heaven is perfect. This view is by no 
means peculiar to Christianity. We find it repeat- 
edly stated by heathen philosophers in the clearest 
terms. Hierokles, the Pythagorean, for example, tells 
us that " each ought to become, first a man, and then 
a god." It is true that the Hellenic view, having its 
root in polytheism, is not identical with the Christian 



70 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



view, which is founded in monotheism ; but the two 
agree in this important respect, that they recognize the 
end of spiritual life to be the attainment of the Abso- 
lute. The most fundamental difference between the 
two views is this : that, while the philosophic Greeks 
held the way to the Absolute to be through the exer- 
cise of the speculative or theoretic virtues, the Chris- 
tian Fathers placed it in the practical virtues, which 
the Greeks held to be merely the conditions of arriv- 
ing at manhood. In later Christianity, which is quite 
as much Hellenic as Hebrew, the two views were 
united. TIiq motto of the greatest of all the monastic 
orders, the Benedictine, which, roughly speaking, was 
founded in the year 500, is, Or a et labor a, " Pray and 
labor," — in other words, combine the practical with 
the contemplative life. As has recently been pointed 
out in an admirable way by the Bishop of Foggia, St. 
Benedict combined in himself the practical wisdom 
of the Boman (he was the son of a Boman patrician) 
and the contemplative spirit of the Christian monk. 

But, besides the above-mentioned difference be- 
tween the Hellenic and Hebrew views, there was 
another, hardly less pregnant in its effects. In the 
Hellenic view, man was destined to attain divinity, 
if at all, through his own efforts, through self-purifi- 
cation and devotion to that contemplation which, as 
Aristotle says, "we sometimes enjoy, God always." 
In the Hebrew view, on the contrary, man was to be 
raised to perfection equal to that of the Father, in 
large measure by grace, that is, by a free transient 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



71 



act on the part of the Divine itself. The doctrine of 
special grace is an abiding portion of the Christian 
creed. Christians, therefore, following the example 
of Jesus, were expected to empty themselves and 
wait till God filled them and exalted them, while the 
Greeks were expected in all ways to strive and help 
themselves. As a natural consequence, the charac- 
teristic Christian virtue is Oriental self-abasement or 
humility, whereas the characteristic Hellenic virtue 
is self-respect or personal dignity. While the Chris- 
tian claims nothing for himself, but looks for every- 
thing as a free gift from God, powerful and pitiful, 
against whom he has no rights, the Greek, conscious 
of his own potential divinity, makes infinite claims, 
and labors in every way to make these good. 

The success of Christianity and the downfall of 
Hellenism mean that the world accepted the Chris- 
tian view and rejected the Hellenic. It has done this 
in large measure, at least in theory, for some eighteen 
hundred years. Still not altogether even in theory, 
and very imperfectly in practice. Though the Hel- 
lenic spirit slumbers, it does not die. 

" The vine-wreathed god, 
Kising, a stifled question from the silence, 
Fronts the pierced Image, with the crown of thorns." 

At no time has this spirit been entirely inactive; 
but its mightiest revolt took place in the sixteenth 
century, in what is known as the Pagan Eenaissance, 
which again was closely connected with the Protes- 
tant Eeformation. In the former there is an asser- 



72 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



tion of the rights of the natural, as over against the 
spiritual ; in the latter, an assertion of the rights of 
human reason, as over against faith ; in both, a revolt 
against the spirit of historical Christianity. In the 
last three hundred years, Hellenism has been making 
rapid strides. Freedom is the order of the day, just 
as submission was in former times, and there can 
be but little doubt that this tendency will go on 
increasing. 

And it is right and well that this should be so. 
In spite of all its great worthiness, in spite of its 
unexampled success, in spite of its manifold adapta- 
tion to human weaknesses and needs, the Christian 
ideal is not a perfect one. It is essentially one- 
sided, and needs to be supplemented by the Hellenic 
ideal, which contains elements both of manliness 
and truth which the Christian ideal lacks. It is in 
every way more manly for the deiform human being 
to work out his own perfection by his own free efforts, 
than to place himself in the position of a dependent 
mendicant and accept it from another. Moreover, 
such perfection, even if desirable, is not possible; 
for perfection is not something that can be imparted 
or received ; it is something that must be worked 
out through a long series of free acts, and these no 
being, not even a god, can perform for another. 

That the Christian Fathers should have adopted 
a view at variance with this, only shows that they 
understood the nature of spirit and of spiritual 
things much less perfectly than the contemporary 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



73 



Pagan philosophers. This difference becomes very 
apparent, when we compare the Christian concep- 
tion of God with the later Hellenic philosophical one. 
The Christian conception is still mythological to a 
considerable extent. According to this, God is still 
only a large man, with all the finite attributes and 
passions of man, an individual among individuals, a 
being who loves and hates, plans and repents. The 
Greek conception, on the other hand, is profound and 
philosophical. According to this, God is above all 
individuality, being its essential correlate and condi- 
tion. None of the attributes of individuality apply to 
him. He is neither one nor many, although he is the 
essential condition of both. He performs no tran- 
sient acts, inasmuch as time does not exist for him. 
He is nowhere, and yet everywhere, because space 
does not exist for him. He is without variation. 
In a word, he is ; he is that which is. He is not a 
reality, since all reality is of necessity finite and 
capable of performing transient acts in time and 
space. That is what we mean by reality. He is the 
pure Ideal, of which the attributes are Absoluteness 
and Infinity. In the material world he appears as 
space, the prime condition of all corporeal existence ; 
in the intellectual world he objectifies himself as be- 
ing., the condition of all thought ; in the moral world 
he diffuses himself as pure love, or as the good, the 
condition of all morality, heroism, and self-sacrifice. 
The sensible manifestation of God was recognized by 
the early Aryans, when they made Dyaus, that is 



74 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Zeus or Jupiter, their chief god ; for Dyaus is merely 
the open sky, which these early thinkers confounded 
with pure space. The intellectual objectification of 
God as Being we find first in the Vedas and in the 
Mosaic records. In the former we read : " He who 
established the six worlds, — is he that One which 
exists in the form of unborn Being ? " In the latter, 
God is made to speak of himself as I am that I am, 
or as / am that am. It is not until after the rise of 
Christianity that we find the clear statement made 
that God is Love ; but centuries before that, as early 
at least as Aristotle, we find what is virtually the 
same thing, the affirmation that God is the highest 
good, that is, the object of the highest love. 

We thus find that all the three modes in which 
the Divine Being reveals itself — the real, the ideal, 
and the moral — have successively and at long in- 
tervals of time been discovered, and even stated with 
almost philosophical precision. Unfortunately, this 
philosophic statement has never attained currency, 
but has always been reduced to terms of the imagi- 
nation. The Infinite has been made finite ; the 
Absolute, relative ; the Ideal, real ; the Eternal, 
transient. Dyaus became Jupiter ; / am that am, 
Jehovah; Love, the angry divinity of Christianity. 
The truth is, the philosophic conception of the Spir- 
itual and the Divine cannot be made intelligible to 
the popular mind, which thinks almost entirely in 
terms of the imagination. Since, however, even 
the popular mind craves, and, for moral reasons, 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



75 



requires, some notions of divinity, an attempt is 
made to accommodate the philosophic conception of 
it to the imagination. These fanciful conceptions of 
the Deity after a time recoil from the people upon 
philosophers themselves, and turn these into theolo- 
gians, who employ all their efforts in order to make 
the popular notions of divinity acceptable to pure 
reason or thought. This is the real source of all 
that is mythic in religion, as well as of all that is 
purely dogmatic. It is, consequently, the source of 
all those systems of religious thought which arise 
from time to time and become popular in the world ; 
for example, Buddhism, Christianity, Mohamme- 
danism. Such systems, though essentially unphilo- 
sophical, and necessarily containing much that is 
erroneous, are in many ways of very great value. 
Indeed, it may be said that practically they are of 
more value than the pure truth would be. The error 
contained in them is like the nitrogen in the atmos- 
phere, which prevents the oxygen from destroying 
the human frame by too rapid combustion. But, 
after all, no religious system whose god or gods are 
to any degree conceived in terms of the limiting 
imagination can be perpetual. The error involved 
will, sooner or later, make itself felt, in thought by 
contradiction, and in life by disorganization, and 
then will follow something in the form of a revolt, 
both in thought and life. The revolt in thought will 
come from philosophers. — not necessarily from pro- 
pounders of systems, but from men intimately ac- 



76 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



quainted with the aspirations and intellectual needs 
of their time, probably from poets or literary men. 
The revolt in life will come either from men who 
have suffered deeply from the institutions among 
which they were born, like Eousseau, or from men in 
whom the "enthusiasm of humanity" is an over- 
powering passion, like the inspired founders of the 
great religions. 

It is this revolt against established conceptions of 
the divine and the institutions founded thereon that 
we call Titanism. But, inasmuch as new conceptions 
of God are practically new gods, Titanism always 
seems a revolt against God himself, a violence, an 
impiety, whereas it frequently turns out to be the 
very opposite. When such a revolt is crushed, the 
revolters are spoken of as atheists and traitors ; when 
it succeeds, they may be counted as prophets and 
religious heroes. As John Harrington puts it, 

" Treason doth never prosper : what 's the reason ? 
For when it prospers, none dare call it treason." 

All revolts against the established order of things 
are due to one form or another of radicalism, — some 
attempt to secure a more perfect expression of the 
fundamental being or nature of things. This is just 
as true of those great religious reformations that have 
ended in giving to mankind a nobler and truer con- 
ception of the divine, and in bringing this conception 
to bear upon human life, as of those wild revolu- 
tions that seek to overturn law and order in favor of 
anarchy and license. There are, indeed, two entirely 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



77 



distinct forms of Titanism, just as there were two 
orders among the mythical Titans themselves. The 
Titans are simply personifications of the brute forces 
of nature and the fundamental forces of spirit. The 
former of these always tend to revolution and an- 
archy ; the latter, even in their revolt against order, 
to a higher order. The former in man we call the 
lusts of the flesh ; the latter we call the aspirations 
of the spirit after the Divine, the Infinite, the Abso- 
lute. Aristotle (De Anima, B. IV. 2 ; 415 b 1) says 
that "all things reach out toward the eternal and 
the divine, and it is for the sake thereof that they do 
all that they do according to nature." Whatever 
acts, then, do not tend toward the Divine may be said 
to be unnatural ; whatever acts do so tend, to be 
natural. All nature, as such, tends to the highest 
order, to the Divine. At the bottom of all revolu- 
tions lies a conception of man as a material being ; 
at the bottom of all reformations, a conception of man 
as a spiritual being, striving to realize the Divine in 
himself. 

Having thus distinguished the two fundamental 
forms of Titanism, we may now ask, Under which of 
the two must we class Goethe's Titanism, — under 
that of Kronos, who rose up in rebellion against his 
own nobler offspring, Zeus, in order to restore the 
world to an older and less spiritual condition, or to 
that of Prometheus, who rebelled against Zeus, in 
favor of something more spiritual than even his do- 
minion ? One may answer this question without 



78 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



hesitation. The Titanism of Goethe is for the most 
part the Titanism of Prometheus. And it is so in 
a very marked and striking way. One can hardly 
read Goethe's best works without being continually 
reminded of Prometheus. The similarity did not 
escape Goethe's own notice. Prometheus was a 
favorite figure with him, and there is perhaps no 
portion of his writings in which his own true charac- 
ter comes out more clearly than in the powerful 
fragment bearing the name of the great Titan. In 
this we find Prometheus, after having served Zeus for 
many years, engaged in open, outspoken rebellion 
against him, and yet enjoying the special favor of 
Zeus's daughter, Athena, the personification of wis- 
dom. In a conversation with her the Titan says : 

" Hast thou not seen me oft, 
In self-elected servitude, 
The burden bear, which they 
In solemn earnest on my shoulders laid ? 
Have I the labor not completed, 
Each daily task at their behest, 
Because I thought that 
They saw what has been, and what shall be, 
Within the present, 

And that their guidance, their command, 
"Was first, primeval and 
Unself -regarding Wisdom ? " 

Prometheus has found the limitations of the gods in 
whom he has been taught to believe. They know 
no more about the past and the future from the 
present than he does ; they are blind leaders of the 
blind, and their blindness is due to the fact that 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



79 



they are selfish, looking for their own enjoyment, 
instead of being universally diffused to bless. Pro- 
metheus has been able to discover these limitations 
of the reigning gods, because he has won the love of 
a younger and nobler divinity, — the ewig-weibliche 
Athena. A declaration of this love on the part of 
Athena, coupled with an expression of respect for 
her father, — 

"Ich ehre meinen Vater, 
Und liebe dich, Prometheus," — 

draws from the Titan these remarkable words : — 

" And thou art to my spirit 
What it is to itself. 
Even from the first 

Thy words have been celestial light to me. 
Ever, as if my soul spake unto itself, 
It opened wide, 

And harmonies, born with it at its birth, 
Bang forth, from out itself, within it, 
And a Divinity 

Spoke when I seemed to speak, 

And when I thought Divinity did speak, 

I spoke myself. 

And so with thee and me, 

So one, so intimate, 

Endless my love to thee !" 

Here we find expressed in its most intense and 
naked form the Titanism of Goethe. It is a revolt 
against the outward gods of tradition and dogma, 
the individual gods of the current religion, in favor 
of the God in his own heart, the God whose kingdom 
of heaven is within him, who is not distinguishable 



80 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



from his own inmost being, who is at once wisdom 
and love and the desire to be utterly diffused in 
creation and blessedness. When Athena blames his 
hatred for the gods, and reminds him that they have 
power, and wisdom, and love, Prometheus replies : 

" All that belongs not 
Unto them alone : 
I too endure like them. 
Eternal are we all ! — 
Of my beginning memory have I none, 
To end I have no call, 
Nor see I any end. 
Thus am I eternal, for I am, 
And wisdom ! — 

(Directing Athena's attention to Ms statues.) 

Look upon this brow ! 

Has not any finger 

Fully moulded it ? 

And all this bosom's might 

Bares itself to meet 

The universal danger round about. 

(Looking at a female statue. ) 

And thou, Pandora, 

Thou sacred vessel of all gifts 

That are delicious 

Under the broad heaven, 

Upon the infinite earth, 

All that e'er thrilled me with emotion sweet, 

That in the shadow's coolness 

Poured refreshing on me, 

All spring delight that ever the sun's love, 

All tenderness that e'er 

The sea's warm wave 

Around my bosom poured, 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



81 



All that T e'er of pure celestial glow 
Have tasted, or of joy of spirit-rest — 
This all, all — my Pandora ! " 

Prometheus feels that he has within himself all the 
divine attributes that he knows of, or can conceive, 
— power, wisdom, love. In only one thing does he 
seem inferior to Zeus, in that he has not the power 
to give life to his creations. Zeus has offered to ani- 
mate them for him, if he will bow down and worship 
him ; but Prometheus contemptuously refuses any 
such condition, and Athena, that is, the divinity 
within him, hastens to assure him that Zeus, what- 
ever he may pretend, has not the giving or the taking 
away of life in his power. That belongs to a higher 
power, whom Athena calls Fate. She will herself 
guide Prometheus to the spring of life, and his crea- 
tions shall live through him. Prometheus replies : 

" Through thee, my goddess, 
Shall they live and feel them free. 
Live ! Their joy shall be thy thanks." 

Let us linger a moment upon this word Fate, which 
the inner Wisdom declares to be higher than the 
gods, to be the source of life, and to impart that life 
through the Titanic spirit. The thought expressed by 
the word is a very profound one, and one that has oc- 
cupied the attention of the greatest thinkers and poets. 
Among the Greeks it had many names, corresponding 
to different aspects of it, Moipa, Alcra, Ueirpcopbevr]^ 
ElfjiapfjuevT], Krjp, 'Avdytcr) or Necessity. In their 
minds it generally lay, as a dim, illimitable, inscru- 

6 



82 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



table background, behind the brilliant array of their 
numerous gods, as something superior to the gods 
and against which they had no power. This thought 
occurs in several passages of the Homeric poems 
(II. XVIII. 117, XIX. 417, &c), but is perhaps most 
clearly expressed in a passage from the third book of 
the Odyssey (236-238) : 

" The gods themselves have not the power to save 
Whom most they cherish from the common doom, 
When cruel Fate brings on the last long sleep." 

It is hardly necessary to say that the same thought 
permeates and dominates the whole of iEschylus's 
tragedy of " Prometheus/' Prometheus, " the high-spir- 
ited son of right-counselled Justice," is more humane 
than Zeus himself, and farther-seeing. The conception 
of divinity embodied in Zeus does not satisfy him. 
Before his mind floats a higher conception, and he 
has learnt from his mother, Justice, that this higher 
conception shall one day be realized, and Zeus hurled 
from his throne by one " who will find a flame might- 
ier than the thunderbolt." What is this but another 
way of saying that Prometheus rebels against the 
external god of the popular fancy in favor of that 
God whom justice proclaims in his heart ? He knows 
and feels that he is rooted in a power deeper and 
mightier than Zeus, a fate by whose eternal decree 
he lives and must live forever. He boasts, " What 
should I fear, who am fated not to die ? " The result 
is that Zeus is finally compelled to release him from 
his cruel torment, and to rise to the height of that 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



83 



ideal which Prometheus had conceived. That inscru- 
table fate whose mouthpiece is Justice is greater 
than any god conceived or conceivable in the image 
of man. The same thought we might easily find, 
more or less clearly expressed, in many passages from 
the other Greek poets. We find, indeed, in some of 
them, and still more frequently in the philosophers, 
that the impersonal Fate is identified with the highest 
god, that is, with Zeus ; but this does not alter the 
character of that fate. When Zeus becomes identified 
with Fate, he loses his capricious, tyrannical attri- 
butes, and becomes that which no imagination can 
conceive and no tongue adequately express, — in a 
word, he becomes the Absolute and Eternal. For, 
after all, the Greek conception of Fate or Necessity 
is, at bottom, a rude conception of the Absolute. The 
Greeks, as we have already said, were far on their 
way to a true conception of the Divine under all 
its forms, extension, being, and love, — when popu- 
lar Christianity, with its Oriental, mythological con- 
cepts, took possession of the world and once more 
imposed upon it a mythical Deity, conceived in the 
image of man. 

In proportion as Christianity found its way among 
philosophers and thinkers, the notion of God fostered 
by it became less and less mythical and more and 
more philosophical, and, indeed, it would not be diffi- 
cult to find among the writers of the two great ages 
of ecclesiastical thought — that of the Fathers and 
that of the Schoolmen — expressions for the Divine 



84 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



as philosophical as any that occur in Plotinus or Por- 
phyry. In no case, of course, is the expression ade- 
quate ; for every expression for the Divine must* to a 
large extent, be negative. 

The attempt to conceive God philosophically is 
especially marked in the works attributed to Diony- 
sius the Areopagite, — the first bishop of Athens and 
the patron saint of Paris, — works which in reality 
were produced about the end of the fourth century of 
our era, under strong Neo-Platonic influences. Here 
we are told, for example, that "the supra-essential 
One limits the existing one and all number, and is 
itself the cause and principle of the one and of num- 
ber, and at the same time the number and the order 
of all that exists. Hence the Deity, who is exalted 
above all things, is praised as a monad and as a triad, 
but is unknown to us or to any one, whether as 
monad or as triad ; in order to praise the supra-unified 
in him, and his divine creative power, we apply to 
him, not only the triadic and monadic names, but we 
call him the Nameless One, the Super-essential, to 
indicate that he transcends the category of being." 
We might find similar expressions in Augustine and 
other influential writers of the patristic period. Sim- 
ilarly, in that most famous of all mediaeval theologi- 
cal manuals, the " Sentences " of Peter the Lombard, 
we find it said : " The Trinity is a supreme thing 
and common to all that enjoy it, if, indeed, it can be 
called a thing and not rather the cause of all things, 
or if, indeed, it can be called so much as a cause." 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



85 



Similar expressions might be found scattered through 
the schoolmen, down as late as the time of Suarez, 
who w 7 as contemporary w T ith Descartes. 

Dante, whose conception of God was eminently 
philosophic, tells us that Holy Writ, in condescension 
to our powers, 

" Doth hands and feet 
Ascribe to God, still meaning something else." 

Although Catholic thought, being trammelled by 
mythical dogmas, could hardly ever have arrived at a 
perfectly consistent philosophical conception of God, 
it had made very considerable advances in that direc- 
tion, when the event of Protestantism once more im- 
posed upon a large portion of the world an intensified 
mythical concept of the Divine. The popular god of 
Catholicism, or rather the god of popular Catholicism, 
a very different being from the god of philosophic 
Catholicism, became the supreme god of Protestantism. 
We all know, probably but too well, the conception of 
God ordinarily held in Protestant churches, and how 
little it differs from the old Greek popular concep- 
tion of Zeus. We all know, too, to what an amount 
of narrowness, bigotry, intolerance, uncharitableness, 
misunderstanding, oppression, and spiritual pride and 
deadness it has given rise. We know how compatible 
it is with almost every form of selfishness and every 
form of economical and political abuse. The Calvin- 
istic form of this conception has been stated, with a 
scathing force that can hardly be excelled, by Burns, 
in his famous " Holy Willie's Prayer," which begins : 



86 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



" Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, 
Wha as it pleases best Thysel' 
Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, 

A' for thy glory, 
An* no for ony guid or ill 
They 've done afore thee." 

Burns too was a Titan, and despised this monstrous 
God with all his heart. 

It was not merely against the cruel and blasphe- 
mous conception of God entertained by Calvin that 
Goethe's Titanic scorn was directed, but against the 
entire Protestant conception of him, and against 
everything that followed naturally from that concep- 
tion. The words which he puts into the mouth of 
Prometheus, as he sits forming men in his workshop, 
after having refused all offers of a compromise with 
Zeus, no doubt accurately express his own feelings 
with reference to the Protestant conception of God. 
He says : 

" While I was yet a child, 
Not knowing out or in, 
I turned my straying eye 
Sunwards, as if above me were 
An ear to hear my plaint, 
A heart like mine 
To pity the heavily-laden. 

" Who helped me 
Against the Titans' arrogance ? 
Who rescued me from death, 
From slavery ? 

Hast thou not all achieved thyself, 
Heart of sacred glow ? 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



87 



And, young and good, didst glow, 
Poor dupe, with gratitude 
To him who sleeps above ? 

" I honor thee ? Wherefore ? 
Hast thou e'er soothed the anguish 
Of the heavily-laden ? 
Hast ever wipeol away the tears 
Of the grief- oppressed ? 
Have I not been forged into a man 
By almighty Time 
And by eternal Fate, 
My lords and thine ? 

" And didst thou fancy 
I should hate life 
And flee to deserts 
Because all blossom-dreams 
Did not bear fruit ? 
Here sit I and mould men 
After mine own image, 
A race to be like me, 
To suffer and to weep, 
To enjoy and to be glad, 
And pay no heed to thee, 
Like me." 

This poem was written in 1773, two years after 
the heroic radical "Gotz von Berliehingen," and 
one year before the still more radical " Werther," in 
which the worst part of Goethe's Titanic tendencies 
culminated. " Prometheus " gives us Titanism in 
the classic world ; " Gotz," Titanism in the mediaeval 
world; "Werther," Titanism in the modern world, 
or rather in the seething world of the eighteenth 
century, previous to the French Ee volution. Of the 



88 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



three works, " Prometheus " is the one that repre- 
sents best the spirit of Goethe's own Titanism, that 
Titanism which remained with him through life. 
The hero of "Gotz" comes to an untimely and dis- 
appointed end, to a death of admitted defeat, through 
the pressure of outward circumstances. The hero 
of " Werther " does still worse, for he puts an end to 
his own life. Prometheus alone remains Titanic to 
the last, defying, and with impunity defying, all ex- 
ternal circumstances, strong in the strength of that 
divinity which glows with a holy flame in his own 
heart. And, indeed, from the point of view of po- 
etic justice, this is as it should be. The Titanism 
which struggles for individual freedom through mere 
physical courage and strength, without due regard to 
existing institutions and moral conditions, must neces- 
sarily suffer defeat. Independence for an individual 
baron would be a retrogression toward barbarism and 
anarchy. On the other hand, that Titanism which 
seeks personal satisfaction in passive sentiment, how- 
ever refined, instead of in rational activity, must not 
only necessarily fail, but must end by making life 
worthless to the person who attempts it. He needs 
no outward circumstances to destroy him : the out- 
raged god within him will be quite sufficient for 
that. Prometheus, whose delight is in creative ac- 
tivity, in loving obedience to the Divinity within him, 
can alone safely and defiantly carry out his Titan- 
ism to the end. Naught can touch him who himself 
gives up all. 



GOETHE'S TITANISM, 



89 



It is a significant enough fact that the drama of 
" Prometheus " was never completed, much as the 
central figure was a favorite with Goethe. And the 
reason of this is curious. Goethe himself some- 
where tells us that his different works represent 
stages in his own culture, and that the completion of 
each work marked the completion of the stage. No 
doubt his individual Titanism ended with " Gotz," 
and his sentimental Titanism, in large measure at 
least, with " Werther." But his Promethean Titanism 
never ended, until the last day of his life. It was 
an abiding fact in his life, indeed perhaps the most 
important fact in it, the source of all other important 
facts. But Goethe, whose spiritual progress was very 
rapid in those years, could not but soon come to see 
that the conflict between Prometheus and Zeus, the 
envious thunderer, could in no adequate way express 
the depth and extent of his own Titanism. Zeus 
could not be made to do duty as the conservative 
Philistine God of Protestantism, and Prometheus 
could not be made to represent all the forms of oppo- 
sition which had to be directed against that God. 

So Goethe, after writing two brief acts (and part of 
a third) of his "Prometheus," abandoned it, and in 
the following year set to work upon another theme, 
in which he must have felt that his own Titanism 
could be much better embodied, — a theme drawn from 
the annals of Protestantism itself, — the story of 
Faust. This theme had several advantages over the 
other, besides modernness and adaption to Goethe's 



90 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

own state of mind. It enabled him to show the 
gradual growth of the true Titanism, out of the 
many forms of false Titanism, to develop its posi- 
tive and beneficent side, instead of its negative and 
defiant side, and to depict the nature of its ultimate 
triumph. 

In " Prometheus " the narrow jealous Zeus, the god 
of popular fancy, still reigns supreme, while the Infi- 
nite God " whose throne is in men's hearts " occupies 
an unrecognized position of patient defiance, mould- 
ing men after his own image. In "Faust," on the 
contrary, the inner, the Infinite God is already su- 
preme lord of heaven and earth, seated in power 
among the cherubim and seraphim, while Zeus, or 
the god of narrow selfishness, is relegated to a small 
sphere in the affairs of human kind. He is, in fact, 
" der kleine Gott der Welt," the little god of the 
world, or rather of worldliness, who, as Mephistophe- 
les says, "always remains of the same fashion, and 
is as queer as on the first day/' To be sure he has 
a glimmer of heaven's light, — even Zeus had that ; 
but he uses it only to be more beastly than every 
other beast. The Supreme God, on the contrary, 
the Lord, so far from being jealous of any one, can 
afford to tolerate the very devil, and even finds a 
use for him. His amenity is so great as to surprise 
that dignitary, who remarks, at the end of his inter- 
view with him, that 

" It is quite handsome in so great a lord 
To speak so kindly with, the devil himself." 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



91 



The dethroned divinity, the god of woiidliness, 
does not appear anywhere in the poem as a distinct 
person, nor indeed does the Supreme Divinity, ex- 
cept in the Prologue. The Deity, who reveals him- 
self in the conscience, and the little god of the world, 
who for the most part directs human institutions, 
alike appear only as tendencies working silently. The 
former shows his power by continually preventing 
Faust from yielding to the allurements of Mephis- 
topheles, the latter appears in the form of official re- 
ligion, which finds its most striking embodiment in 
the Astrologer at the imperial court. This dignitary 
is ready at once to enter into close alliance with 
Mephistopheles, even when the latter plays the part 
of court fool, so much so, that, when asked how 
things look in heaven, — " Wie sieht's am Himmel 
aus ? " — he replies in a mock-serious, meaningless 
speech whispered into his ear by Mephistopheles. 

The difference between the relative positions of the 
great and the little deity in " Prometheus " and in 
" Faust " really marks the difference between the rela- 
tive positions of conscience and human law in ancient 
and modern times. In ancient times, the laws of the 
state and of society, both written and unwritten, were 
held to be superior to the individual conscience, 
whose exercise in opposition to them, as in the case 
of Sokrates, could be regarded only as v ft pes, inso- 
lence, or insubordination. In modern times, on the 
contrary, it is universally held that conscience, when 
sane, has a higher claim than any human decree. 



92 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

It was doubtless this fact among others that made 
Goethe select Faust, rather than Prometheus, as 
the representative of his own Titanism. It must be 
remarked, too, that Faust's consciousness of the Su- 
preme Divinity is at first very slight compared with 
that of Prometheus. He appears in all his splendor 
to the latter from the first, in the person of Athena, 
and draws forth his most ardent love and conse- 
quent activity. Faust is hardly conscious of him at 
all, except as a vague feeling that somehow directs 
him in the midst of his dark strivings. The Lord 
says to Mephistopheles, speaking of Faust : 

" Though, but confusedly he serves me now, 
Yet will I soon conduct him into clearness. " 

Goethe's Titanism, then, is Prometheanism, only 
with the relative position of the two deities, the great 
and the little, changed, and the vision of the former 
dimmed in the soul. Whereas Prometheus lives to 
obey the Supreme God, whom he knows and loves, 
and is, therefore, supremely happy in his defiance, 
Faust toils on in darkness, seeking the vision of this 
highest God, whom he finds at last, when he reaches 
the philanthropic position (fyiXavOpwiros rpoiro^y as 
iEschylus says) of Prometheus. Though Faust is by 
no means Goethe, yet Faust's problems are those 
which most profoundly occupied the mind of Goethe. 
Goethe's life, with all its activities, in so far as they 
had his own approval, was a Titanic struggle against 
the god of the world, under the inspiration of the 
God whom he felt in his own soul, and whom he 



/ 



GOETHE IN AGE. 

-orn the bust by Ranch about 1820. 



GOETHE'S TITAN ISM. 



93 



recognized as speaking out of the very depths of 
being, with the voice of Fate and Justice, which in 
the last result are one. The conception of this God 
which we find in Prometheus is not materially 
altered in Faust, except that in the latter more 
emphasis is placed upon the fact that the wisdom 
which speaks with authority in the human heart and 
intellect is also Lord of the universe. Further we 
cannot go ; at least, further Goethe could not go. 
He deprecated all attempts to define God as a person, 
or as anything else. When Margaret asks Faust 
concerning his belief in God, the latter replies : 

" My darling, who dare say, 
I believe in God ? 
Mayst question priest or sage, 
And their answer seems to be 
But mockery of the asker." 

And when Margaret persists with 

" Then you do not believe ? " 

Faust replies in the much admired speech, of w r hich 
I shall quote only a part : 

" Mishear me not, thou gracious countenance ! 
Who dare name him, 
And who confess 
I believe in him ? 
Who can feel 
And have the courage 
To say, I believe not in him ? 

"Doth not all crowd 
Into thy head and heart, 
And pulse in everlasting mystery 



94 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Invisible, visible, beside thee ? 

Fill full thy heart therewith, in all its bulk, 

And when in feeling thou art wholly blest, 

Then name it what thou wilt, 

Say bliss ! heart ! love ! God ! 

I have no name 

For it ! Feeling is all ; 

Name is sound and smoke, 

Beclouding heaven's glow." 

This speech has been very much admired, as em- 
bodying the highest conception of divinity possible 
for man. I think it is the highest conception of di- 
vinity to which Goethe ever attained, and the one 
under the influence of which he played the Titan 
against the God of popular tradition and worldliness. 
But it is by no means the highest conception of God, 
and its limitations mark Goethe's own limitations, 
and the defects in his Titanism. Two elements, and 
perhaps the most important of all, are omitted, — 
truth and right, — in one word, holiness. The God of 
Faust, who is in the main the God of Goethe, is not 
a moral God, and Emerson was entirely right when 
he maintained that Goethe was incapable of a sur- 
render to the moral sentiment. The simple fact is, 
that the moral sentiment, pure and simple, found 
no utterance in Goethe's heart, and hence could not 
appear in his God, who was but the bearer of the 
utterances that were found there. 

It may perhaps be objected, that it is unfair to 
attribute to Goethe a conception of God put into the 
mouth of Faust at a time when that hero was still 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



95 



far from God ; and this would be correct, if it could 
be shown that Goethe ever attained to any higher 
conception. Such, however, I have not been ab]e to 
find in his works or in his life. Faust himself at- 
tains to no riper conception, even in heaven. "We 
find many instances in which Goethe shows his 
comprehension of the divine nature, by declaring it 
to be in things, and not outside of them, and by 
refusing to define it in the imperfect forms of speech. 
In a short series of poems called " Gott und Welt," 
he writes : 

" What were a god that pushed but from without, 
And let the world about his ringer spin ? 
God must be one who moves the world within, 
Nature in Him, Himself in Nature holding, 
So that what in Him lives and moves and is 
May never miss His power, His spirit never." 

And again : 

" There is a universe within the soul, 

. And hence all nations laudably permit 
Each man to call the best he knoweth God, 
Yea, his God, to deliver to Him earth 
And heaven, to fear, and, if he can, to love Him." 

In "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre," in speaking 
of the three forms of reverence, (1) for that which is 
above us, (2) for that which is below us, (3) for 
that which is on a level with us, he says : — 

" These three produce together the true religion. 
From these three reverences springs the highest rever- 
ence, reverence for oneself, and this again is the source 



96 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



of the other three. Hence man arrives at the highest of 
which he is capable, by being allowed to consider himself 
the best that God and Nature have produced." 

In 1813, writing to Jacobi, he says : — 

" I, for my part, with the manifold tendencies of my 
nature, do not find one aspect of the Divine enough. As 
a poet, I am a polytheist ; as an investigator of nature, 
I am a pantheist, and both in the same degree. If I 
require a personal god for my personality as a moral 
being, that also has been provided for in my mental con* 
stitution." 

This last is perhaps the most explicit declaration 
we have of Goethe's theological belief, and it is a 
most important one, as showing the character of the 
Divinity under whose inspiration he played the Titan 
against the popular Divinity of his time. This Di- 
vinity is conceived as above number, equally capable 
of being conceived as one and as many, as occasion 
may require. In so far as he is a person, he is identical 
with Goethe's own personality, the very inmost core 
and essence of that. The notion of an individual, per- 
sonal God, existing outside of him, Goethe rejected 
with the utmost scorn, and in so doing returned to 
the philosophic position of developed Hellenism, — 
to the position of the iSTeo-Platonists, — as opposed to 
the mythical view of Christianity, and especially of 
Protestantism. 

It has often been said that Goethe was a Pagan. 
Even his biographer Dimtzer gives him this appella- 



GOETHE'S T1TANISM. 



97 



tion. This is not only correct, but it is correct in a 
deeper sense than is generally known. We have seen 
that the three forms under which the Divine has been 
conceived are space (or extension), being, and love. 
These appear in Christian theology in the mythical 
forms of the Father, who is being, the Son, who is 
space, the condition of creation, and the Holy Ghost, 
who is love, the source of all action in the world, as 
even Empedokles saw. The aspect of the Divinity 
which most struck the Hebrews, and which, conse- 
quently, is uppermost in Christ's teaching, is that of 
being, or of the Father. Now, it is just this aspect of 
him that is the ground of morality ; for morality has 
its foundation, not in extension or in love, but in the 
very depths of being. Even love itself has a moral 
significance only in so far as it is distributed in 
accordance with the recognized exigencies of being. 
For this reason the Hebrews were pre-eminently a 
moral people, a people ready to bow before the author- 
ity of the Divine, a people, when at their best, obe- 
dient even unto death, for the sake of the right. J ob 
can say (I quote from the revised version) : " Behold, 
He will slay me; I have no hope; nevertheless, I 
will maintain my ways before Him. This also shall 
be my salvation." (xiii. 15, 16.) Now it was just the 
moral aspect of Divinity that was wanting in Helle- 
nism. The Neo-Platonists were careful to say that 
God was above being {eire/tewa tov 6Vto?), and hence 
above the good. In saying this, they thought they 
were honoring Him ; but in truth they were losing 

7 



98 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the moral aspect of Him • for the ground of all mo- 
rality is being. The immoral is simply that which 
contravenes the essential laws of being, that which 
strives to be and cannot 

This failure to recognize God as being and as the 
ground of morality was the essential weakness of 
Hellenism from first to last, although, as one might 
have expected, it was formulated only when that sys- 
tem was near its close. Movements formulate them- 
selves only at their close. Goethe then, in being a 
Pagan, as he was, failed to see the moral aspect of the 
Divine. He saw it as omnipresence and as love, 
but not as authority. His highest god was not the 
absolute right and good ; it was rather the beautiful. 
Nay, it was not even the highest kind of beauty, that 
which moulds a life 

" In loveliness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic though t." 

It was rather the half-sensuous beauty which is capa- 
ble of being expressed in symmetry and rhythm, the 
two forms in which harmony displays itself in space 
and time. Calm, serenity, balance, freedom from strife, 
from Sturm und Drang, — these were the attributes 
of that perfection which Goethe aimed at, and which 
therefore was his God. The still, adamantine strength 
which speaks out the truth without thought of conse- 
quences to self, that courts strife as the life of the 
world, that is so strong as to be ready to accept suf- 
fering unflinchingly, which seeks satisfaction in ser- 
vice and self-diffusion, — this was not Goethe's ideal. 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



99 



Goethe was an artist, his spirit and temperament were 
those of the artist, not those of the martyr. Like an 
artist, he labored for finish, for completion, which has 
a term ; not for perfection, which stretches away into 
the eternal. He saw what was in process around 
him and divined a good deal more ; but that which 
lay behind the process he did not see. He saw evo- 
lution, but caught no glimpse of that which - evolves. 
In one word, he lacked what Parmenides called faith, 
the vision of the eternal, of that which is, of God. 
He could see some of God's relations, — those to art, 
nature, and his own personality, — but God himself 
he could not see. Hence in Goethe there is none of 
the martyr spirit. The thought of dying to make men 
holy, or even to make them free, could never enter 
into his calculations. He wished to make his own 
life a complete poem, finished and harmonious in 
this world, and it was for the sake of this harmony 
that he demanded renunciation of the discordant ele- 
ments. The utter renunciation of self, of the natu- 
ral self, in order to find a self that is above nature, 
above process, individual, yet infinite and perfect as 
the Father which is in heaven is perfect, was a state 
of mind he could not rise to. He could not, in a 
word, combine Christianity with Hellenism, which is 
the problem of our time, but remained essentially 
Hellenic. The god in whose name he titanized was 
still an imperfect god, a duality, not a trinity. 

The reason why Goethe failed to find the highest 
God, when men like Dante, that mightiest of the mod- 



100 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



ern Titans, succeeded, is not hard to discover. It lay 
partly in his own temperament, which was sensuous 
and made heavy demands. It lay partly in his edu- 
cation, which did not go far to curb that temperament 
and subject it to divine law. But it lay also in the 
philosophical atmosphere of his time, in the clouds of 
Spinozism and Kantianism that went to darken the 
atmosphere. Say what it may to the contrary, modem 
philosophy from Descartes to Spencer is atheistic in 
the deepest sense. It is essentially a philosophy of 
process, not of being, — of genealogy, not of ontology. 
Now God, essential being, is just that which lies out- 
side of all process, that transcends all evolution, that 
imparts all movement, but does not itself move. We 
may call other things God, — the process of events, 
the current that makes for righteousness ; but in do- 
ing so we are idolaters, setting up the idols of our 
imagination for God. And the idols of the imagina- 
tion are far worse gods than the graven images of 
men's hands. When the pure intellect and its object, 
essential being, are banished from philosophy, God 
and the true ground of moral being will soon be ban- 
ished from life, and false gods, or no god, will soon 
take His place. 

But, besides the three causes mentioned as pre- 
venting Goethe from attaining to the highest con- 
sciousness of Divinity, there was still a fourth, — the 
direction of his studies, which was toward nature 
and the emotional or sensuous side of spirit. Goethe 
rather despised logic and metaphysics, the sciences 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



101 



of pure spirit, but these sciences had their revenge, 
as they never fail to do, and as his own Mephis- 
topheles, as conceived in his youth, knew that they 
did. 

" Only despise intelligence and science, 
The highest powers accorded unto man ! 
In things of glamour and of magic let 
Thyself be hoodwinked by the spirit of lies, — 
Then have I thee at once without condition." 

Of course, no one would think of saying that Goethe 
fell a prey to Mephistopheles, or that he was a bad 
man. On the contrary, Goethe was a good man, in 
very many senses a great man : he was a Titan, 
trying to steal divine fire to better human lives, and 
in a large degree succeeding. But, after all, it was 
not the purest fire that he stole, but a fire dimmed 
with the smoke of sweet incense. 

Let us now try to sum up the character of Goethe's 
Titanism, and to show wherein it was manly and be- 
neficent, and where it fell short of the highest. Its 
greatness consisted mainly in this, that it warred 
against the external enslaving god of tradition and 
conventionality, with all his belongings in the shape 
of human institutions, and did so in the name of the 
internal, freeing God whose kingdom is within us, 
whose being is our being, who exists in every human 
soul, making us one with the Father and capable of 
being perfect as he is perfect. Its shortcomings 
were all due to the fact that Goethe was unable to 
conceive this inner God in his full majesty of ab- 
solute insight, love, and diffusive power. And this 



102 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



inability again was certainly due to the fact, that in 
Goethe himself the inner God was riot revealed in all 
his majesty. Only the pure in heart see God, and 
this for the reason that the heart is the eye where- 
with God is seen. 

But though this is strictly true, it must be admitted 
that Goethe struggled manfully during his long life 
to remove the film from his eye, and obtain a clearer 
and ever clearer view of the Divine. If he did not 
at any time entirely succeed, that was his misfortune, 
in the garb indeed of fortune, rather than his fault. 

And this leads me to say a word of the different 
stages of Goethe's Titanism, which I have inten- 
tionally left to the end. It is generally said that it 
was confined to the early part of his life, and practi- 
cally ended with his visit to Italy. Now in a certain 
superficial sense this is true, but only in a superficial 
sense. It was considerably transformed before he 
started for Italy ; but it did not altogether cease at 
any period of his life, though it tended ever more and 
more to become a compromise. The " little god of the 
world," under the influence of the great God, has be- 
come much wiser since the days when Zeus sent Pro- 
metheus to the limits of the world, to be riveted to a 
rock and to have his liver torn by vultures. He now 
not unfrequently takes the new Prometheuses into 
his service, and makes them privy-councillors, thus 
rendering them in large measure innocuous and ob- 
taining from them much good for themselves. To 
drop metaphor, Goethe's persistent good fortune, in 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



103 



the course of time, tamed and soothed his Titanism 
and ever made him more desirous of finding a recon- 
ciliation between the world-spirit and the supreme in- 
ward God. This tendency assumed the form almost 
of homage to the world-spirit in the later part of 
Goethe's life, especially during that reactionary period 
which followed the excesses of the French Kevolu- 
tion, when men, wearied with Titanic struggling and 
in a measure cheated of its results, turned back with 
a kind of pathetic fondness to the obsolete systems 
of the past, seeking for rest anywhere, even in a mon- 
astery. It would be wrong to say that Goethe at 
any time proved a traitor to the highest God, and 
did homage only to Baal; but that he was deeply 
affected by the reactionary spirit that prevailed dur- 
ing the last decade of his life, there can be no doubt. 
More and more he became averse to Titanic revolu- 
tion, more and more in favor of quiet evolution. 
He disliked the volcanic theory even in geology, and 
said that the Protestant Eeformation had disturbed 
quiet evolution (storte ruhige Bildung). This ten- 
dency becomes apparent more or less in all that he 
wrote after Schiller's death, but especially in the clos- 
ing scene of the Second Part of " Faust." Here, in 
the summing up of his greatest work, a work begun 
in the Promethean spirit, some sixty years before, he 
altogether abandons the Titanic position, and seems 
to revert to the submissive attitude of Eoman Cathol- 
icism. Faust reaches heaven, not by his own efforts, 
and by bringing the reigning Divinity to terms, but 



104 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



by the help of good angels, conceived as the Middle 
Age conceived them, and by the levitating power of 
the purified spirit whom he had once wronged. He 
not merely effects a reconciliation with the popular 
God, but he makes entire submission to him, allow- 
ing himself to be carried to heaven, like a mediaeval 
saint from the cloister. No doubt Goethe allowed 
Faust, as a man of the sixteenth century, to do things 
which he himself would not have done; but there 
can be no doubt that, as Goethe became an old man, 
his early Titanism tended to lose itself in compromise 
and even submission. " The wise indifference of the 
wise " unfortunately often takes this direction. 

But, after all, this tendency in Goethe's case is not 
a matter for surprise. His Titanism had not at 
any time been of that kind which imparts perfect 
satisfaction to the Titan, and can therefore endure for- 
ever. In that Titanism there was always an artistic 
and somewhat sensuous element of self. He could 
never entirely surrender himself to the God within 
him, in utter self-forgetfulness, careless of happiness. 
He is said to have asserted, with some pathos, toward 
the end of his long and marvellously fortunate life, 
that he had never, in all that life, known more than 
an hour's happiness. This shows what he had been 
seeking for, shows the defect in his Titanism, shows 
why it ended in compromise and submission. It 
shows also why his literary work is, after all, so frag- 
mentary, and why many of his contemporaries con- 
demned him as a renegade to progress and humanity. 



GOETHE'S TITANISM. 



105 



Had Goethe, in the days of his early Titanism, seen 
God, the inner God, as authority, as being, and not 
merely as omnipresence and love, the case would 
have been different. No compromise would have 
been needed, the want of happiness would not have 
been felt, his works w 7 ould have had the glorious 
unity of the " Divina Commedia," and he w r ould have 
been recognized as the uncompromising Titan, the 
manifestation of Very God. 

The truth is, Goethe wavered between the Chris- 
tian spirit and the later Hellenic spirit, without ever 
being able to unite them, for the reason that he never 
seized either in its purity. This union is the great 
problem of our time. To reject the outer god of 
mythology, and all his works, — to cling to the inner 
God, who is the very life of our life, the self of our 
self, — to crush out mercilessly the little temporal self 
in ourselves, in order that the great, the eternal, the 
divine self may be free to manifest itself, — that is 
our task ; a task to be performed titanically by our- 
selves and by none other. There is no salvation any- 
where but in our deepest selves, no light anywhere 
but in the hidden shrines which we call our own souls. 
No outer God, with the best of wills, can save us ; 
for salvation means being strong in and through our- 
selves. It is a poor charity that pampers weakness, 
instead of making strong, that tries to make depend- 
ents, suppliants, and thralls, instead of free, pure 
men and women, obedient only to the laws of that 
kingdom of heaven which is within them, and striv- 



106 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

ing to be perfect, as the Father which is in that 
heaven is perfect. 

That Goethe did not attain to this point of view 
is a matter to be regretted, but not one for which we 
can afford to blame the great poet. For many a long 
year he struggled manfully, with all the power that 
w T as in him, against the aggressive blandishments of 
good fortune, which continually reinforced the smaller 
self in him, and, though he did not altogether conquer 
in the end, he has left much work that will go far to 
help others to conquer. For such help, and such help 
alone, one man can give to another. He can point 
out the whither and the why of a religious life, and 
make it clear that there is no ultimate blessedness 
save in that uncompromising Titanism which fights 
in the name of the inner God of truth and love and 
right, — above all, of right. 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



107 



IV. 

GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 

/ 

By CYRUS A. BAKTOL, D. D. 

" "Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to 
be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the highest 
matter. Action can be understood and again represented by the 
spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing while he acts aright, 
but of what is wrong we are always conscious." — Wilhelm Meisters 
Indenture. 

The authorities of the Concord School of Philoso- 
phy demand of me to measure the incommensurable, 
to compare a literary accident with an intellectual 
necessity, to make an equation of an event with an 
element. To group and paint on one canvas two 
so unlike characters and incomparable minds were a 
rash attempt, which yet must share its presumption 
between the assigners of such a trust and the incom- 
petent assignee, however unduly bold the latter may 
be in handling it, giving less his reasons than impres- 
sions leading to the conclusion that the genius of the 
two foremost German poets is too diverse for any 
common scale. Goethe's superiority is not in degree, 
but in kind. They lie together ; so do Chamouni 
and Mont Blanc. Schiller might have been or not, 



108 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

Goethe must have been. He was a necessity. He 
was hewn out of the rock he proceeded to hew from. 
He re-created the language his tongue lisped in the 
cradle. He reconstituted the nation of which he was 
born. To take out Goethe were to take out Germany 
from modern history. Napoleon, who said he found 
but two men in Italy, found but this one in Germany, 
and bluntly said to him, " You are a man/' as he said 
to his military staff, "There is a man." But how 
little Napoleon dreamed that the man he nodded this 
compliment to would by his thinking and writing so 
unite his divided and distracted country as to be the 
prophet of Bismarck and Moltke, and, as the Jews 
fancied of their Elias, reappear after a generation, and 
in turn overcome the empire Bonaparte transmitted 
to his dynasty, at Sedan and the gates of Paris, with- 
in full sight of the conqueror's tomb ! Goethe was 
denounced as no patriot because he did not personally 
withstand the invader, but declared him too strong 
to resist. He was blamed that he did not seize the 
trumpet and throw away the harp. He replied, that 
military songs might be composed by Korner amid 
the neighing of horses, but not by himself sitting in 
a room. " When I was in love, I wrote love-songs ; 
why should I write songs of hatred when I did not 
hate ? " His contribution to freedom was his thought, 
and every word from his pen, though no summons to 
arms. That in aught beside the doctrinary devotion 
to native soil, which is so cheap on the Danube or the 
Merrimack, Schiller surpassed him, does not appear. 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



109 



In the purely intellectual realm, they are to be rather 
contrasted than compared. Schiller's poetry is reg- 
ular, often magnificent in its bursts ; Goethe's is 
inspired from the universal law and order, as much 
part of nature and human nature as the landscape is 
of the world. Schiller has a fine plot, with able and 
admirable execution. He produced pieces adapted to 
the stage. He has more personal ambition and ingeni- 
ous contrivance to compass, by managing the public, 
his literary ends ; knows how to play the game, and 
instructs Goethe in it, when they become a sort of 
business firm and a literary coalition against common 
foes; but a deeper than any aim at popularity, or 
wish to win or please had the elder companion, — too 
great to be a compeer, above being rewarded, and 
scorning to be bribed or pre-empted ; witness to the 
truth of things, advocate of the universe, with but from 
his Creator a retaining fee. Schiller's verse is clear 
and sweet, and shows a rare constructive gift. He 
excels in the speeches he puts into his heroes' and 
heroines' mouths. He is quotable in many a splendid 
passage. His printed oratory is superb. But decla- 
mation is for the hour, and its platform does not 
abide. Eloquence, below the supreme pattern, cannot 
endure the test of pewter types. It is an effervescing 
glass, to be drunk at the moment. It is manna, that 
will not stand over to the next day. 

It is not lack of reflection that sets Schiller in the 
second rank. Rather his philosophy entangles and 
drowns his Muse. Nor is a basis of fact in his 



110 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



compositions the want. He is historical, as for a 
singer he is metaphysical, to excess. He is not the 
warbler that Goethe is, and has not the pitch. 
Goethe is as the bobolink that flies and sings at 
once, its transporting music subsiding into a short 
chirp as he lights on a bough, or fence, or swaying 
stem in the field. No master, ancient or modern, 
more triumphantly than Goethe has cloven the at- 
mosphere of our common breath with lyrical airs. 
Of the transcendent bards, Homer, Dante, Shake- 
speare, he is the last. Homer — be it said without 
offence to the traditional father of song — begins to 
look gray with the world's longevity and the an- 
tiquity of letters and religious myths. Dante is 
supra-mundane, vexed with Italian feuds, provincial 
in his scope. He loves Beatrice and other divine 
creatures, with the Supreme Head ; but he hates 
many men and spirits, for whom he fashions his 
dread converging circles of the pit. He makes his 
Inferno his masterpiece. He spends himself on that, 
— and more on the Purgatory than the Paradiso ; 
writes the sentence "No hope," as the frontispiece 
of hell, and throws the earth into eclipse with the 
awful shadows of other spheres. Shakespeare and 
Goethe are the two great poets for the modern mind, 
for humanity, for the hour that is coming and that 
now is. Goethe posts the- books up to date; insists 
that everything shall be natural, real, and true, pres- 
ent to the faith and experience of mankind. Milton 
treats us to stately and sonorous lines, that march in 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



Ill 



perfect step. They are as an army at whose even 
and solid tread the earth trembles, while banners 
flaunt and sounds of drum and trumpet pierce the 
air. But his manner is more than his theme. He 
surfeits us with fabulous celestial doings, fancied dia- 
bolical rebellions, extra-terrestrial battles, and fenz 
$ artifice, pyrotechnics, however by the tragedy they 
illustrate made sublime, yet shot off to accompany a 
theology that no longer can fit our condition or con- 
tent our moral sense. The Satan he shows issuing 
from the far-off under-world portals for his travels, 
with brave equipment, to compass the ruin of a dis- 
tant planet, precursor of all Alexander-like con- 
querors, Goethe with a drop of ink depicts in the 
shape of a poodle, starting up in a study or a street, 
let in or out at the corner of a diagram, dressed and 
talking like a gentleman, up to all the tricks of trade, 
plausible and persuasive as any huckster or broker, 
a dealer in jewelry, ready to enter a maiden's cham- 
ber, captivate a duenna, spur to a quarrel, and lay 
down on any counter the coin for the price of a 
human soul. He lives next door, and at our own 
and our neighbor's service. We suspect his lodg- 
ing in our breast. Ever since Goethe wrote, in all 
lands we say of any cunning man-shaped devil 
he is a perfect Mephistopheles. Demons, angels, 
or mortals Goethe makes familiar spirits, domes- 
ticates and plants them on the earth. Natural or 
supernatural, they are always real ; and many of 
Schiller's characters beside them are as stuffed fig- 



112 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



ures of tradition, or paper silhouettes cut by meta- 
physical scissors. 

Goethe's gold brightens, Schiller s lacquer tarnishes 
and fades, with use. Why are the moth and rust at 
work on compositions which the school-girls thirty 
years ago were mad over, Don Carlos, Marie Stuart, 
the Eobbers, and William Tell, while Wilhelm Meis- 
ter, Elective Affinities, Hermann and Dorothea, mul- 
tiply their constituents and strengthen their hold, and, 
as readers appreciate, are insured against accident ? 
Schiller has fared better than Goethe on the play- 
house boards ; but the world is the stage on which 
Goethe's men and women are players of his dra- 
matis personce, the scene being life, and society the 
panorama unrolled. Goethe knew good work, and 
therefore did it. He said, I thought I should have 
done some things differently from Shakespeare, but 
soon learned what a poor sinner I was, and that he 
is Nature's prophet : and Goethe is the same : Faust 
and Hamlet coequal in date, although, in the Second 
Part of Faust, Helena can never be popular even 
among scholars. 

The women are alike good from the English and 
the German draughtsman, however honestly either 
acquired his skill. Margaret and Mignon are not 
copies of Ophelia or Desdemona, and their colors are 
as fast. Shakespeare did not, perhaps could not in 
his lordly age, glorify like his successor a humble 
peasant lot. Both were close to nature, witnesses 
faithful and true; and Goethe is the chief example 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



113 



in history of critical and creative faculty combined. 
Art, he says, consists not in making beautiful descrip- 
tions, but in describing beautiful things. Without 
being intimately present for a long time with a spe- 
cial object, he adds, the artist cannot succeed. With 
Schiller rhetoric prevails over reality. He is a per- 
former whose expression is sacrified to his technique. 
* The Song of the Bell " is a fine poem ; Wallenstein 
and Thekla are noble characterizations, but fashioned 
by conventional rules. The author lacks the artless 
graces, knows too much. Goethe, with all his skill 
and information, obeys the genius he does not pre- 
tend to understand or guide. "I prefer/' he says, 
" that the power which works in and through me 
should be hidden from me. I have never thought 
about thought. I have metaphysics enough to last 
me for life." Nature to him is God's anteroom and 
audience-chamber. He does not try or expect to 
reach the Sovereign Presence by climbing up some 
other way, or presume at the King's shoulder to dic- 
tate or suggest, but humbly pores over his hand- 
writing to peruse or spell it out. He is as physical, 
as much of a naturalist, including the soul, in his 
poetry as in his science. When Schiller complains 
that a lecturer had shown Nature not in her unity, 
but in specimens and bits, Goethe eagerly expounds 
to him that unity in the metamorphosis of plants, 
each portion as a transformed leaf. Schiller replies, 
that this is not an observation but an idea. Goethe 
rejoins, that he is glad to have eyes to behold such 

8 



114 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



ideas in nature. He says, " When I look, I see all 
there is." So he saw the topmost vertebra expanding 
into the skull, and the seven colors as mixtures of 
light and shade. Schiller did not consider that we 
can see, with eyes, only what the frame of nature 
tends to. Newton does not see the fall, as an ap- 
ple, of the sphere : Kepler does not see the planetary 
approximations, nor Darwin the animal evolutions : 
they see indications and draw conclusions which 
the facts and motions require. Nature refuses to 
be caught in the very act. Goethe saw the live 
robe of God w T hich the earth-spirit weaves ; and 
he held all the bright and dark yarn in some extra 
pair of hands. He portrays man, the living, moving 
body of the race ; not, like our Emerson, the indi- 
vidual mind or the Holy Ghost alone. Emerson 
spins a thread, Goethe weaves a web. Emerson 
snatches a trumpet from some angel's grasp, Goethe 
greets us with an orchestral symphony. Emerson 
fetches the top-stone of a monument or pinnacle of 
a temple before the structures are reared and ready ; 
Goethe builds from the ground with vast and com- 
plete design. Emerson arrives a pilgrim and stran- 
ger after long sojourn in a foreign land, angelic visitor 
from some heavenly sphere, and, shrewd though he 
be, gets but half-acquainted with this world; Goe- 
the is native to the soil, and know T s every earthly 
mother's son and daughter by heart. None higher in 
aim than Emerson, more a prince among the fine 
spirits that have lighted up this earth with a celes- 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



115 



tial gleam: none more true to his call, which was 
not, like that of Shakespeare and Goethe, to set forth 
this human membership which we are. He is a solo- 
ist at the concert, his performance slenderly related 
to the choir. He imperfectly appreciates the func- 
tions of church or state. He gazes at Goethe as an 
antelope, gazelle, or camelopard might at Behemoth 
or the great Pan. He is the zenith which from a 
scornful altitude surveyed the nadir and the poles. 
Yet Emerson draws from Goethe. 

" And e'en the grass shall plot and plan 
What it will do when it is man," 

comes after Goethe's encouragement to the Proteus 
Delphis in " Helena/' — 

" Through myriad forms of being wending, 
To be a man in time thou It rise." 

So hard it is to be original. The last shall be first 
and the first last. Emerson and Darwin are antici- 
pated, exceeded, and included by Goethe. The most 
generous of admirers, Emerson notes the merits of his 
senior contemporary without justice to his supreme 
human representative claim. 

"Faust/' the crowning product of the nineteenth 
century, is to his dainty mind a disagreeable book, as 
if a poem, epic or dramatic, could be made of the leav- 
ings when all the sad and dark passages of the world- 
tale should have been erased ; the critic not seeing 
that it is only against the facts or materials of the 
tragedy that his objection holds. He complains that 



116 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Goethe neither surrenders himself to the torrent of 
inspiration nor devotes himself to the absolute truth ; 
cares for art for the sake of culture, and is not even 
an artist because not incorporating all the matter 
of his pages in artistic form ; the censure from other 
quarters being that Goethe is artist too much with 
determination of blood to the head at the cost of the 
heart. Puritan clashes with cosmopolitan. Emerson 
writes to Carlyle, " Goethe can never be dear to me " ; 
and, in his " Eepresentative Men," that he can never 
be dear to mankind. Sterling wrote to Carlyle that 
Goethe is not to be loved, and Carlyle cries back, 
" Who has the right to love him ? " " Goethe was a 
wicked man," exclaimed a lady lecturer ; and a bad man 
he was long before pronounced to be by a Cambridge 
orator, who describes him as inwardly felicitating him- 
self on the rich accession to his artistic domain from 
discreditably precious experiences, and deriving mate- 
rial for poetry from sufferings wantonly caused. That 
moral worth is essential to intellectual success was the 
orator's point, which he declared he would not give 
up for a hundred Goethes, — as if the earth had not 
labored in bringing forth one ; and that it was too 
soon to conclude that Goethe as a man of letters does 
succeed ; that the love and enthusiasm of the German 
heart ran to Schiller, the true, earnest, whole-souled 
man with his great, glowing, outpoured heart. Forty- 
one years are gone since this conscientious prevision, 
and time as yet gives no backing to the seer, who did 
not foresee. Time cannot be so cheaply subsidized 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



117 



and suborned. Time seems to be of the opinion, that 
a man may have faults or defects, or commit immo- 
ralities, as Moses and David and Solomon did, and as 
in some way and measure all men, the harsh judges 
included, do or may have done, and yet not be reck- 
oned as refuse for the dunghill; but repent and be 
pardoned, even be exalted, like him who slew the 
Egyptian in a passion, or like the Hebrew Psalmist, 
or his son, with his bitter-sweet proverbs for part of 
the canon ; or like St. Augustine, head father of the 
Church, when a boy ; or, to take illustrations from our 
own day, like some platform speaker, Christian profes- 
sor, or occupant of a presidential chair. The condon- 
ings of history make a strange chapter when mixed 
with the decrees of the moral sense. To say that 
Goethe gloated over the sin, while he gathered up the 
lesson, is a calumny. Sin would play all of us a 
worse trick than it does, if we learned nothing from it. 
Shall we revile Peter for turning with beautiful petri- 
faction his inconsistencies into a rock, or Paul for 
making fuel of his persecutions to kindle his devotions 
to super-heat? When we assail David for his fifty- 
first penitential Psalm, issue of his adultery, it will be 
in season to attack Goethe for the pathetic strains that 
accompany or follow his unhappy slips of like sort. 
Stones will not be so plenty and at hand if the inno- 
cent, who are never known to throw them, are com- 
missioned to cast the first. " That," said the visitor, 
pointing to a picture on the wall, " is a St. Cecilia/' 
"No," replied the lady, "a Magdalen." "Pardon 



118 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



me, my eyes are so poor/' he answered, " I cannot 
tell a sinner from a saint.'' An ill opinion of human 
virtue exaggerates, both in individuals and the com- 
munity, the sum of sexual vice, till a malaria of sus- 
picion confounds the general virtue, and covers like a 
baleful fog the land. Goethe, born with immense 
susceptibility, bred in an atmosphere which French 
license and German sentiment mixed for his breath, 
and becoming like a city set on a hill, erred too often 
and conspicuously to be hid. History must mark him, 
not as treacherous or insincere in his affections, but 
volatile, inconstant, lacking that consecration whose 
mutuality between two persons, man and woman, is 
the right, duty, and glory of both. But it demoralizes 
society to decide that the unmarried may not have 
friendships as pure as they are dear. 

Great men are too scarce to be thrown away, even 
for grievous faults. Consult proportion in what you 
judge. Measure the mountain, as well as the rift in 
its side. We accept vast benefits from and for them 
own our debt to Webster, Hamilton, as factors and 
benefactors ; and to Samuel Johnson, mournfully con- 
fessing, "Ah! I have not lived as I ought." Schiller's 
record appears to be free from this particular blot, to 
which, by his cleaner or less passionate constitution, 
he was not exposed. But how his loyal wife be- 
friended Goethe, and promoted confidence in the two 
identified homes ! But Schiller's early pen left some 
stains ; and he had sins, of as deep a dye as his 
friend's, in the jealousy which made him say of 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER, 119 



Goethe, "This man stands in my way"; in the am- 
bition which proposed his own honor for his object, 
as well as, if not more than, the common good, and 
the indirection with which he sometimes brought his 
purposes to pass, — in contrast with Goethe's sim- 
plicity, royal generosity, and the modesty with which 
he accepted criticism of his own writings for more 
than it was worth. His ability at such a multiple 
distribution as he made of his own heart is a flaw. 
The two parts of God's image whose sundering is 
sex tend, run, fly together, and collisions occur. The 
ever- womanly draweth us on ; the ever-manly too, 
what woman will not add? But desertion of another, 
even for the sake of one's own supposed destiny, is 
a crime ; and doubtless there are eyes fine enough to 
see where Goethe's work suffered for his mistake. 

Among the appreciators of Goethe, why such 
warmth in Thomas Carlyle, a man so pure, so slow to 
praise and quick to blame ? Was it that he found in 
Goethe, for once, no sham, but a veracity without par- 
allel in the literary guild, — words like those nails in 
the Bible by the Master of assemblies fixed, fastened, 
driven in a sure place, written on an iron leaf, — and 
an originality unmatched in this age ? We can find 
a touch of Carlyle and of Emerson in Wordsworth, in 
Thomas Browne, and in Montaigne. But, says Dr. 
Hedge, Goethe lighted his torch at the sun. Perhaps 
Carlyle, resembling Goethe in his truthful testimony, 
admired also what he wanted himself, and never quite 
attained, the serenity of the great author, as if he sat 



120 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

in the star Sirius with a pen reaching to the earth, — 
from the subjects he was identified with so wondrously 
remote ! But he was wicked ? No, such an altitude 
as his is impossible for a bad man ! Satan, the Devil 
or evil one, is restless, goeth up and down, seeking 
whom he may devour. Says Miss Shepherd, author 
of " Counterparts/' — " Show me poetry of a bad man, 
and I will show you wherein it is not poetry." The 
impartial, disinterested justice with which such au- 
thors as Shakespeare and Goethe enter into the char- 
acters they depict, or without comment impale, like 
Izaak Walton loving the bait he fished with, is 
goodness. 

We are preached to or at by essayists, as well as 
from the pulpit ; but open the books of these poets, 
and we are in the midst of people, a swarm of our 
fellows, as kindly dealt with as by Him that made 
them, as equitably treated as all will be at the last 
bar on the judgment-day. Inordinate passion turns 
to poison with the ingredient of a lie. O political 
or clerical fornicator, beware of that ! A Cato or 
Brutus, stern patriot, severe moralist, professed phi- 
lanthropist, Goethe is not. " As for wind and sun, 
and the good of the human race, let Heaven take 
care of them to-day as it did yesterday." But good 
he pre-eminently is. His heart, said Jung Stilling, 
which few knew, was as great as his head, which all 
knew ; and his wisdom born of the heart amazes us 
as a new Book of Proverbs. His " Apothegms " was 
the one volume Emerson took on his journey. When 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



121 



the creation was finished, God said, It is all good. 
So says Goethe. He accepts the situation, and he is 
master of it. He does not quarrel with the world, 
that sits at his easel, more than Stuart or Reynolds 
with their models. He is an optimist, and would let 
all people into heaven, with the goats not on the 
left hand. Had he not thought it worth his while to 
draw, as the Lord did to shape, goat or sheep ? He 
delights in Spinoza's pantheism. He is not a re- 
former. He fancies things and folks to-morrow will 
be very much as to-day. He copies for approval 
into his journal the Latin motto of Thraseas, "Who 
hates vice hates mankind," and subjoins a maxim of 
his own. Our vices and our virtues grow from one 
and the same root. Whatever else he may or may 
not be, he is not malignant. He comprehends, and 
does not exclude. Schiller is vehement and diplo- 
matic. Herder is morose. Goethe may be stiff, but 
never loses his grand benign balance, only exceptions 
to his theory of colors irritated him a little in his old 
age. Let "The Sorrows of Werther" and "Gotz of 
Berlichingen " attest that his calmness, what carpers 
call coldness, was acquired ! Vesuvius has overflowed, 
with whatever vineyards the sleeping volcano may 
clothe its sides. Only inward harmony could beget 
songs classic as Pindar and simple as Burns, — some 
dear image being with him in the fairest spot. 

" Dearest Lili, if I did not love thee, 
How transporting were a scene like this ! 
Yet my Lili, if T did not love thee, 
What were any bliss ? 



122 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



" Alas ! the gentle bloom of spring no longer 
Cheereth my poor heart ; 
There is only spring and love and nature, 
Angel, where thou art." 

Some other heart was always in his breast, though 
those looking on knew it not, and from his love 
for the prototype of Ottilie he bears the arrow long 
sticking in his own heart. Whatever the transsres- 
sions in whose shame the so-called victims, whose 
victim he was, partake, and however excelled he was 
by Schiller in the home-integrity, which is a corner- 
stone of the commonwealth, Goethe's temper was 
goodness to every creature that breathes, from an 
instinctive piety with which the child of seven 
rears an altar to the Deity, as before he is eight he 
writes German, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. 
His disgust is loud at the horrible tapestry, from the 
history of Jason, Medea, and Creusa, with which, as 
an unwilling portent of her fate, the French artists 
salute the young queen, on her way to Paris, Marie 
Antoinette. He is no coward. To cure himself of 
sensitiveness to painful sights and of a tendency to 
giddiness, he ascends the dizzy cathedral-top, wit- 
nesses hideous surgical operations, as Dickens got 
over sea-sickness by a score of resolute crossings of 
the British Channel. He ploughs on foot through the 
snows to the Furca, and seeks the smell of powder, 
feels the cannon fever mid flying balls on the battle- 
field. To call him dissolute is not to describe such a 
man. He is religious, believes in God and immor- 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 123 

tality, reveres the Bible, bows before Christ, refuses, 
chief scientific genius as he was of his time, to admit 
a scientific basis for religion, it being its own ; a nat- 
uralist, he sees in nature more than can be reduced to 
natural laws, even an infinite beauty and unspeakable 
charm. He repents where he has been misled, and, in 
" Elective Affinities," deposits sad experiences, he says, 
as in a burial-urn. He judges that the sentiment of 
faith concerns us more than the object on which it is 
fixed. 

In his account of Fraulein von Klettenberg, he 
gives us a record of private worship equalled no- 
where out of Holy Writ, although he imagines some- 
what self-conscious in such homage as she renders ; 
and he playfully assures her he considers the Deity 
in arrears with him, and is called a foolish fellow 
for his presumption by her purified lips. In all 
his immersion in the Kantian philosophy, in which 
Goethe also wades and dredges, Schiller discovers no 
more of the substance of God than was revealed to 
the flitting fancy of his envied rival unawares, who 
found the proof of Heaven, a belief which was its 
own evidence, in the action of his soul. If he was 
for a while the pleasing sinner he calls Philina, he 
was no sour saint. He puts into Faust's mouth a 
doxology, ascription to the Most High which no 
hymn-book can vie with, expounds a threefold 
reverence in a way to instruct every theologist ; and, 
making prayer justify itself, dispenses beforehand 
with Mr. TyndalTs hospital-gauge. Do the next 



124 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



duty, renounce, worship sorrow, are his lessons. The 
priests cannot keep his offerings out of their contri- 
bution-box, however they bluster their condemnation 
on his head as they carry it round. His mental 
hospitality in cordially accepting, after Schiller's 
half-honest aversion and backbiting coquetry and his 
own Olympian vows, the inferior man of letters to 
his friendly glowing embrace, to receive from him not 
very important encouragement and advice, is dem- 
onstration of radical magnanimity. When Schiller, 
ten years his junior, is sick, he is troubled, anxiously 
inquires, divines from the silence of those around 
him that the end has come, says Schiller is dead, 
covers his face with his hands, and laments an irre- 
parable, loss. In the delirium preceding his own death 
he sees a bit of paper on the floor, and asks why so 
careless as to leave Schiller's letters in that fashion 
lying round loose, — his affection, as the living wave 
ebbed in his bosom, showing its unsounded depth. 

In England the man who has rated Schiller high- 
est and studied Goethe most is Thomas Carlyle. It is 
like the praise of Sir Hubert Stanley when he makes 
Goethe of modern literature the head. Schiller was 
but the Mercury to that Jupiter, with whom Carlyle 
might be in some sense and measure a competitor 
had he become as peaceful and sunny as he was 
strong ; could he have spoken the Yea of his own 
" Sartor Eesartus " and left behind him the everlasting 
No, to learn the power of ideas as well as of will, 
and to perceive how mighty Goethe was, not in tak- 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



125 



ing a partisan side in whatever affair was in question, 
but in thinking it all out and with glad content ; not 
wishing to be brilliant, doing justice in his portraits 
to things and persons the most dull and common- 
place, but genuine in every way, because he dis- 
cerned how the repetition of forms and phrases ossifies 
the organs of intelligence. Goethe was a son of the 
morning; he wrought as the elements, he changed 
the climate and emancipated the human mind. Car- 
lyle wielded the hammer of Vulcan, struck Cyclo- 
pean blows, and heated, to fashion anew and better, 
the old metal of the earth's annals. Standing round 
the strong and sweating craftsman, we feel like boys 
in whose faces fly the sparks and cinders from the 
blacksmith's forge. But, as he looks up, his honor 
for the unfallen German Lucifer is not less trust- 
worthy by reason of the limits of his own position. 
He especially delights in the easy and airy style in 
which by his superior the miracle is done. But let 
me give specimens, such as translation of German 
into English allows. Take Mignon's death-song, in 
her gala attire, as she declines to be undressed. 

* Such let me seem till such I be, — 
Take not my snow-white dress away ! 
Soon from this dusk of earth I flee 
Up to the glittering lands of day. 

" There first a little space I rest, 
Then wake so glad to scenes so kind ; 
In earthly robes no longer drest, 
This band, this girdle, left behind. 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



*' And those calm shining sons of morn, 
They ask not who is maid or boy; 
No robe, no garments, there are worn, 
Our body pure from sin's alloy. 

" Through little life not much I toiled, 
Yet anguish long this heart has wrung ; 
Untimely woe my blossom spoiled, 
Make me again forever young*" 

ncens, charged by Faust with neglect of war< 
when Helena arrives, explains his dereliction : 

" Let me kneel and gaze upon her, 
• Let me live or let me die, 

Pledged to serve with truth and honor 

The god-given dame am I. 

" Watching for the morning, gazing 
Eastward for its rising, lo ! 
In the south, my vision dazing, 
Eose the sun, a wondrous show. 

" Neither earth nor heaven -ward turning, 
Depth nor height my vision drew; 
Thitherward I gazed, still yearning 
Her the peerless one to view. 

" Eyesight keen to me is granted, 
Like to lynx on highest tree ; 
From the dream which me enchanted 
Hard I struggled to be free. 

&< Could I the delusion banish ? 
Turret, tower, barred gateway, see i 
Vapors rise and vapors vanish, — 
Forward steps this deity. 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



" Eye and heart to her I tender, 
I inhale her gentle light ; 
Blinding all, such beauty's splendor 
Blinded my poor senses quite. 

"I forgot the warder's duty, 
I forgot the entrusted horn ; 
Threaten to destroy me, — Beauty 
Tameth anger, tameth scorn." 

me add the " Chorus of Nymphs " : — 

" He draweth near I 

In mighty Pan 

The all we scan 

Of this world-sphere. 
All ye of gayest mood advance, 
And him surround in sportive dance. 
For, since he earnest is and kind, 
Joy everywhere he fain would find. 
E'en 'neath the blue o'erarching sky 
He watcheth still with wakeful eye ; 
Purliug to him the brooklet flows, 
And zephyrs lull him to repose ; 
And when he slumbers at midday, 
Stirs not a leaf upon the spray. 
Health-breathing plants, with balsams rare, 
Pervade the still and silent air. 
The nymph no more gay vigil keeps, 
And where she standeth, there she sleeps. 
But if, at unexpected hour, 
His voice resounds with mighty power, 
Like thunder or the roaring sea, 
Then knoweth none where he may flee. 
Panic the valiant host assails, 
The hero in the tumult quails. 
Then honor to whom honor is due, 
And hail to him who leads us unto you." 



128 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

In a different strain, like Tennyson before the time, 
is " Peneios surrounded by Waters and Nymphs " : — 

" Sedgy whispers, gently flow, 
Sister reeds, breathe faint and low; 
Willows, lightly rustle ye, 
Lisp each trembling poplar tree." 

Goethe knew himself. He could measure himself. 
When some of the Eomanticists preferred Tieck, he 
said, " I speak freely, I did not make myself; it is of no 
more use to compare Tieck with me than if I should 
compare myself with Shakespeare." This latter com- 
parison, however, with a greater nature than his, some 
scholars in Germany make ; and consider Faust a 
more commanding peak to observe human life from 
than Lear, Othello, or Macbeth. 

Goethe, like Thackeray and Victor Hugo, tried 
sketching as well as writing, as Michael Angelo was 
painter, sculptor, architect, and poet, and Leonardo 
da Vinci could turn his hand to any art, painter, 
sculptor, architect, engineer. But there is a law 
against coveting. Eare is success in more than one 
calling. The Apostle Paul would not go beyond his 
own into another man's line of things. God and 
Nature grudge us any perfection. It might be too 
much for hope of progress without end were there a 
man who did not lack, and need eternity to mend. 

Schiller is the poet of a section and season ; Goe- 
the, of ages and the world. In personal relations, 
not intellectual merits, they meet. The putting their 
names together in a lecture, for one theme, reminds 



GOETHE AXD SCHILLER. 



129 



me of the Soothsayer's talk with Antony in Shake- 
speare's play. 

" Ant. Say to me, 
Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar's or mine ? 

"Sooth. Caesar's. 
Therefore, Antony, stay not by his side. 
Thy demon, that 's thy spirit which keeps thee, is 
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, 
Where Caesar's is not ; but near him thy angel 
Becomes afeared as being o'erpowered; therefore 
Make space enough between you." 

I see Schiller in his customary pacing about in his 
composing-room through the night, rousing himself to 
his stint with some stirring of exercise as he spouts 
a passage and resorts from time to time to the stim- 
ulating draughts at his side ; and I find cause for 
whatever may be strained or unnatural in the literary 
result. Goethe is started from healthy slumber by 
the Musagetes, which he celebrates, the flies that bring 
the Muse as they buzz and sting. Schiller thunders 
and lightens, Goethe brings music and light. Michael 
in the " Prologue in Heaven " describes the swift de- 
structive storms, and adds, as if to hint Goethe's 
genius, 

"But, Lord, thy messengers revere 
The mild procession of thy day," 

If they think not, Landor tells us, the gods stride and 
thunder in vain. We have declaimers and decorators 
enough ! Goethe is a continental upheaver, a world- 
force ; not by reason of his knowledge alone ; but, to 
adopt Horatio Greenough"s title for one of his marbles, 

9 



130 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

by the genius of love. Supreme in self-love he has 
been called. A man working so hard for near fourscore 
years, he felt entitled to another body. Is the Creator 
selfish, living in what he creates, losing himself in his 
works, making the smallest creature large enough to 
eclipse Himself, wearing a veil which he cannot, like 
Moses, put off, — making all nature glow with the 
presence no burning bush can bound, and conscious 
only in his children's souls ? I stand with some 
awe before the likeness realized by a human author 
with the Divine, when I see that he exists, as no 
egoist can, in his offspring, and that the least and 
lowliest of them is as dear to him as any duke or 
pope. 

Ideality is neighbor to Benevolence on the phreno- 
logical chart. So we speak of the good Homer, be- 
cause by a sympathetic imagination he gives all his 
gods and men, goddesses and women, a fair chance, 
which from poets alone the latter as yet have had ; 
and from no poet more than Goethe, not better even 
from Shakespeare. With what just spacing his pen- 
cil draws ! We have a sense of room in all his 
work, as when we read in the Book of Genesis of the 
succession of days and dividing of the firmament, — 
and what an observer he is of the sphere he projects, 
never getting himself into his own object-glass as a 
mote or blur! Yet he surveyed himself apart as a 
natural curiosity. The guests are many, the entertain- 
ment great, the host unseen; and the keeper of this 
vast inn for the weary foot-sore humanity of yet to 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER, 



131 



be reckoned generations is not evil, but good ; but of 
being a perfect model of righteousness he comes short. 
We have heard much of what is called the artistic 
temperament as explaining, if not excusing, fretful- 
ness and self-indulgence as besetting sins. Char- 
lotte Cushman said to me, in palliation of an artist's 
errors, " Artists do not take the moral point of 
view." But certainly she did. Washington Allston 
needed no cloak of charity. We read no list of ex- 
ceptions for bards or actors in the law from Sinai, or 
the larger code of good news. The moral constitution 
cannot be nullified. God is no respecter of persons. 
Gifts enhance obligations. 

Goethe is one of the magi or wise men. He says, 
only by knowing others can one know himself. But 
only by loving others as he did, can we know them. 
The best knowledge goes with loyal love. Cover him, 
as Othello begged of Emilia, Gratiano, Lodovico, and 
Cassio to be protected ! 

" Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate, 
Nor set down aught in malice : then must you speak 
Of one that loved not wisely but too well.' , 

Must we not say not well enough ? Could Johann 
Wolfgang Goethe, the youth, have cast his own horo- 
scope, or could he have known to what a Brocken of 
witch and will-o'-the-wisp certain paths would lead, 
and could he have seen his own imasje magnified on 
the screen of time, he might not have had always the 
same choice of things on which, in his demeanor, the 
light should fall. 



132 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



In his drama or broad farce of " Mitschuldigen," the 
Fellow Culprits, all sinners in divers ways, of whom 
was he thinking for his characters but the race of 
mankind, of us all who pass sentence on him ? Says 
Lear to Gloster, " Change places, and, handy dandy, 
which is the justice, which is the thief ? " 

" Compound for sins we are inclined to, 
By damning those we have no mind to." 

The just disclosed letters of Goethe are said to pre- 
sent his social loyalty in a more favorable light. On 
the sliding-scale of iniquity we can never for indi- 
viduals anticipate the ultimate decisions. A certain 
act, word, spirit, we may condemn : the actor, speaker, 
person, we dare not doom. As the poet Burns tells 
us, we can know what is done, not how much is 
resisted. 

Goethe and Schiller : yes, but Goethe has Schiller 
in tow. The association is not intrinsic, but acci- 
dental. Schiller is behind Goethe, not as one of two 
racers, runners, or regatta yachts; he is inferior in 
kind, as a ruby is to a diamond, or a garnet to a pearl. 
Schiller moulds, Goethe makes. Schiller composes, 
Goethe crystallizes. Goethe is a projectile like a 
planet, Schiller a spent ball, or rather like the swiftly 
spinning top that begins to waver on the floor. Goe- 
the is one of a handful whom God and Nature hold 
for immortal fame; Schiller is among the thousand 
lesser luminaries. Goethe was self-luminous and con- 
scious, like Caesar or Bonaparte, of an end he was 
born for; Schiller was brilliant, adventurous, and con- 



GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 



133 



trived to carry his points. Goethe had the poise as 
well as brightness of the sun, Schiller shone more by 
reflected light. Goethe was a reporter or private 
secretary of the King, and without an intention utters 
no word. He is the granite, Schiller the secondary, 
yielding, friable trap-rock. 

When Daniel Webster was urged to make a special 
effort, he said, " I will not strain myself to kill a fly; 
I reason not from worlds to atoms, but from atoms to 
worlds." The mark of greatness is ease, because then 
not the man, but the supreme power in him, is at 
work. The best work is unconscious, as the shell- 
fish carves and paints its house. It is the Divine 
Wisdom rather than energy that Goethe represents : 
so there is less grandeur of motion and of rising to 
the sublimer heights than in Shakespeare's Muse. 
He is, in the way of rushing strength, outstripped by 
Homer and Dante too. Yet his like their scripture 
bears being translated into every tongue. He sees, 
and helps us to see, more than he stirs and inspires. 
But his name seems chosen to announce his nature, 
and somewhat of the Deity is revealed when his 
instrument is handled and played. His eyes shed 
serene light over all. His works are an illustrated 
edition of the world. 

Schiller is one of the great poets below the first 
rank. Put with Goethe, he is like some hill fair and 
noble by itself, but dwarfed by the neighboring height 
by which it is overtopped. As a singer, even by Heine 
he is surpassed. He is of a youthful quality, whi 



134 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

recommends him to young Germany and America 
more than to the old in either land ; and I am con- 
tent that youth should, if it please, put what it may 
consider as any detraction from him to the score of 
the prejudice of age. Schiller is ardent : with a tran- 
quil fervor, Goethe is warm, but instructive above all. 
If I may use the figure, drawn perhaps from a grape- 
laden wain, " his paths drop fatness." His pithy say- 
ings are not protruded with any conscious superiority, 
but fall without conceit and almost unawares by the 
way, in the large handling of his themes. Accused of 
egoism, as an author he is eminently free from that 
fault, which clings rather to writers of the oracular, 
transcendental, or radical school. The prophet or 
renewer of the time and the race must, how T ever inno- 
cently, yet be loftily sensible of his momentary mis- 
sion, as he towers an object of attack from the world 
he assails. But the dramatist, which such a man as 
Goethe is, alike in his verse and his prose, finds no 
room to scold or scream at what he portrays. He 
paints a Madonna, like Correggio, or a scene of dicers 
and drunkards, after the coarse style of some Dutch 
artist, with impartial concern. He leaves sinner and 
saint in the hand of that other Author who creates 
or permits both to exist. 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



135 



V, 

GOETHE'S MARCHEN. 

/ 

By FREDERIC H. HEDGE, D. D. 

In the summer of 1795, Goethe composed for 
Schiller's new magazine, " Die Horen," a prose poem 
known in German literature as " Das Marchen," The 
Tale; as if it were the only one, or the one which 
more than any other deserves that appellation. 

It is not to be supposed that the author himself 
claimed this pre-eminence for his production. The 
definite article must be taken in connection with 
what precedes it in the " Unterhaltungen Deutscher 
Ausgewanderten"; it was that tale which the Abbe 
had promised for the evening's entertainment of the 
company. 

Goethe gave this essay to the public as a riddle 
which would probably be unintelligible at the time, 
but which might perhaps find an interpreter after 
many days, when the hints contained in it should be 
verified. Since its first appearance commentators 
have exercised their ingenuity upon it, perceiving it 
to be allegorical, but until recently without success. 
They made the mistake of looking too far and too 
deep for the interpretation. Carlyle who, in 1832, 



136 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



published a translation of it in " Fraser's Magazine," 
and who pronounces it " one of the notablest per- 
formances produced for the last thousand years," 
says, "So much however I will stake my whole 
money capital and literary character upon, that here 
is a wonderful Emblem of Universal History set 
forth/' etc. 

But Goethe was not the man to concern himself 
with such wide generalities. He preferred to deal 
with what is present and palpable, and the inferences 
to be deduced therefrom. 

Dr. Hermann Baumgart, in 1875, under the title, 
"Goethe's Marchen, ein politisch-nationales Glau- 
bens-bekenntniss des Dichter s," wrote a commentary 
on " The Tale/' which gives what is probably the true 
explanation. If it does not solve every difficulty, 
it solves more difficulties and throws more light 
on the poem than any previous interpretation had 
done. I follow his lead in the exposition which I 
now offer. 

" The Tale " is a prophetic vision of the destinies 
of Germany, an allegorical foreshowing at the close of 
the eighteenth century of what Germany was yet to 
become, and has in great part already become. A 
position is predicted for her like that which she 
occupied from the time of Charles the Great to the 
time of Charles V., a period during which the Holy 
Eoman Empire of Germany was the leading secular 
power in Western Europe. 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



137 



That time had gone by. From the middle of the 
sixteenth century until near the middle of the nine- 
teenth, Germany declined, and at the date of this 
writing (1795) had nearly reached her darkest day. 
Disintegrated, torn by conflicting interests, pecked 
by petty rival princes, despairing of her own future, 
it seemed impossible that she should ever again be- 
come a power among the nations. 

Goethe felt this, he felt it as profoundly as any 
German of his day. He has been accused of want of 
patriotism, and incurred much censure for that alleged 
defect. He certainly did not manifest his patriotism 
by loud declamation. During the War of Liberation 
he made no sign. Under the reign of the Holy Alli- 
ance he did not side with the hotheads, compeers of 
Sand, who placed themselves in open opposition to the 
government. He could not echo their cry. They 
were revolutionists, he was an evolutionist; and 
they hated him, they maligned him, they invented 
all manner of scandal against him. They accused 
him of abusing the affections of women for literary 
purposes. They even affected to depreciate his ge- 
nius. Borne pronounced him a model of all that is 
bad. Menzel wrote: "Mark my words ; in twenty, 
or, at the longest, thirty years, he will not have an 
admirer left; no one will read him." Well, near 
sixty years have elapsed, and here we are, on the 
other side of the globe, devoting these summer days 
to the reverent consideration of the man and his 
works. 



138 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

But in the thirties and forties of this century 
those slanders had crossed the sea, and found ready 
acceptance on this side. There was nothing too bad 
to be said of Goethe ; he was publicly held up for 
reprobation and scorn. It was as much as one's 
reputation was worth to speak well of him. 

Goethe, I say, was charged with want of patriot- 
ism. He was no screamer ; but he felt profoundly 
his country's woes, and he characteristically went 
into himself and studied the situation. The result 
was this wonderful composition, " Das Marchen." 

He perceived that Germany must die to be born 
again. She did die, and is born again. He had the 
sagacity to foresee the dissolution of the Holy Ro- 
man Empire, an event which took place eleven years 
later, in 1806. The Empire is figured by the com- 
posite statue of the fourth King in the subterranean 
Temple, which crumbles to pieces when that Temple, 
representing Germany's past, emerges and stands 
above ground by the Eiver. The resurrection of the 
Temple and its stand by the Eiver is the denoue- 
ment of the Tale. And that signifies, allegorically, 
the rehabilitation of Germany. 

The agents that are to bring about this consumma- 
tion are the spread of liberal ideas, signified by the 
gold of the Will-o'- wisps ; Literature, signified by the 
Serpent; Science, signified by the Old Man with 
the Lamp ; and the Church, or Eeligion, signified by 
his wife. The Genius of Germany is figured by the 
beautiful Youth, the disconsolate Prince, who dies of 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



139 



devotion to the Fair Lily. The Lily herself repre- 
sents the Ideal. 

Having premised thus much, I now proceed to 
unfold the Tale, with accompanying comments, omit- 
ting, however, some of the details, and presenting only 
the organic moments of the fable. 

In the middle of a dark night (the dark period of 
German history) the ferryman asleep in his hut by 
the side of a swollen river is awakened by the cry of 
parties demanding to be ferried across the stream. 

Here let us pause a moment. The Hut, according 
to Baumgart, is the provisional State (Nothstaat), 
the government for the time being. The Ferryman 
then is the state functionary who regulates and 
controls civil intercourse. The Eiver represents that 
intercourse, the flow of current events, swollen by 
the French Eevolution. Now a river is separation 
and communication in one. The Ehine, which sep- 
arates Germany from France, is also a medium of 
communication between the two. What is it, then, 
that the Eiver in the Marchen separates and medi- 
ates ? This is a difficult question. No interpreta- 
tion tallies exactly with all the particulars of the 
allegory. The most satisfactory is that of a separa- 
tion and a means of communication between State 
and people, between official, established tradition and 
popular life. 

To return to the story. The Ferryman, roused from 
his slumbers, opens the door of the hut, and sees two 
Will-o'- wisps who are impatient to be put across. 



140 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



These are the bearers of the new ideas which 
proved so stimulating to the German mind, giving 
rise to what is known in German literature as the 
Aufklarung (enlightenment). Why called Will-o'- 
wisps ? They come from France, and the poet means 
by their flashes and vivacity, as contrasted with Ger- 
man gravity, to indicate their French origin. 

They cause the Ferryman much trouble by their 
activity. They shake gold into his boat (that is, 
talk philosophy, the philosophy of the French Ency- 
clopaedists) ; he fears that some of it might fall into 
the stream, and then there would be mischief; the 
stream would rise in terrible waves and engulf him. 

The new ideas were very radical, and, if allowed 
to circulate freely in social converse, might cause a 
revolution. 

He bids them take back their gold. " We cannot 
take back what we have once given forth." 

The word once spoken cannot be unspoken. 

When they reach the opposite shore, he demands 
his fare. They reply that he who will not take 
gold for pay must go unpaid. He demands fruits 
of the earth (that is, practical service), which they 
despise. They attempt to depart, but find it impos- 
sible to move. 

Philosophy without practical ability can make no 
headway in real life. 

He finally releases them, on their promise to bring 
to the Eiver three cabbages, three artichokes, and 
three onions. 



GOETHE'S M ARC HEN. 



141 



I am not aware that there is any particular signifi- 
cance in the several kinds of vegetables here speci- 
fied. The general meaning is, that whoever would 
work effectually in his time must satisfy the necessi- 
ties of the time, must pay his toll to the State with 
contributions of practical utility. 

The ferryman then rows down the stream, gathers 
np the gold that has fallen into the boat, goes 
ashore and buries it in an out of the way place in 
the cleft of a rock, then rows back to his hut. 

Now in the rock cleft into which the gold had been 
cast dwelt the Green Serpent. The Serpent is sup- 
posed to represent German Literature, which until 
then had kept itself aloof from the world, had wan- 
dered as it were in a wilderness. But the time was 
now come when it was to receive new light and be 
quickened with new impulse. 

She hears the chink of the falling gold pieces, darts 
upon them, and eagerly devours them. They melt in 
her interior, and she becomes self-luminous, — a thing 
that she had always been hoping for, but had never 
until then attained. 

Proud of her new lustre she sallies forth to discover 
if possible whence the gold which came to her had 
been derived. She encounters the Will-o'- wisps, and 
claims relationship with them. 

" Well, yes," they allow, " you are a kind of cousin, 
but you are in the horizontal line ; we are vertical. 
See here." They shoot up to their utmost height. 
" Pardon us, good lady, but what other family can 



142 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

boast of anything like that? No Will-o'-wisp ever 
sits or lies down." The Serpent is somewhat abashed 
by the comparison. She knows very well that al- 
though, when at rest, she can lift her head pretty 
high, she must bend to earth again to make any 
progress. She inquires if they can tell her where 
the gold came from which dropped in the cave where 
she resides. They are amused at the question, and 
immediately shake from themselves a shower of gold 
pieces, which she greedily devours. "Much good 
may it do you, madam." 

In return for this service they desire to be shown 
the way to the abode of the Fair Lily, to whom they 
would pay their respects. 

The Fair Lily represents Ideal Beauty. 

The Serpent is sorry to inform them that the Lily 
dwells on the other side of the river. u On the 
other side ! " they exclaim, " and we let ourselves be 
ferried across to this side, last night, in the storm ! 
But perhaps the Ferryman may be still within call, 
and be willing to take us back." " No," she says, 
" he can bring passengers from the other side to this, 
but is not permitted to take any one back." 

The interpretation here is doubtful. It may mean, 
that, while a jealous government is willing to as- 
sist in the deportation of questionable characters, 
it will have nothing to do with them on its own 
ground. 

But besides the government ferry there are other 
means of getting across. The Serpent herself, by 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



143 



making a bridge of her body, can take them across at 
high noon. 

Literature in its supreme achievements, its me- 
ridian power, becomes a vehicle of ideas which defies 
political embargo. 

But Will-o'-wisps do not travel at noonday. An- 
other passage is possible at morning and evening 
twilight by means of the shadow of the Great Giant. 
The Giant's body is powerless, but its shadow is 
mighty, and, when the sun is low, stretches across 
the Eiver. 

Here all commentators seem to agree in one inter- 
pretation. Says Carlyle, " Can any mortal head, not 
a wigblock, doubt that the Giant of this poem is 
Superstition ? " This is loosely expressed. Unques- 
tionably superstition, in the way of fable or fore- 
boding, stretches far into the unknown. But it 
is a shadovj according to the Tale, which possesses 
this power. Now, to make a shadow two things 
are needed, — light, and a body which intercepts the 
light. The body in this case is popular ignorance ; 
that is the real giant. Superstition is that giant's 
shadow, strongest and longest, of course, when the 
sun is low. 

Thus instructed, the Will-o'-wisps take their leave, 
and the Serpent returns to her cave. 

Now follows the scene in the subterranean Temple, 
the Temple of the Four Kings, — by which we are to 
understand historic Germany, the Germany of old 
time. The Serpent has discovered this temple, and, 



144 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

having become luminous, is able to see what it con- 
tains. There are the statues of four kings. The 
first is of gold, the second of silver, the third of 
bronze, the fourth a compound of several metals. 
The first King, who wears a plain mantle and no 
ornament but a garland of oak leaves, represents the 
rule of Wisdom and acknowledged worth. The sec- 
ond, who sits and is highly decorated, — robe, crown, 
sceptre, adorned with precious stones, — represents 
the rule of Appearance (Schein), majesty supported 
by prestige and tradition. The third, also sitting, 
represents government by Force. The fourth, the 
composite figure in a standing posture, represents the 
Holy Eoman Empire of Germany. The Serpent has 
been discoursing with the Gold King, when the wall 
opens and enters an old man of middle stature in 
peasant's dress, carrying a lamp with a still flame 
pleasing to look upon, which illumines the whole 
temple without casting any shadow. This lamp 
possesses the strange property of changing stones 
into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into pre- 
cious stones, and of annihilating metals. But to 
exercise this power it must shine alone ; if another 
light appears beside it, it only diffuses a clear radi- 
ance, by which all living things are refreshed. 

The bearer of this lamp is supposed by Baumgart 
to represent Science ( Wissenschaft), but it seems to 
me that his function includes practical wisdom as 
well. What is signified by the marvellous properties 
of the lamp must be left to each reader to conjecture. 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



145 



"Why do you come, ,, asks the Gold King of the 
Man with the lamp, " seeing we already have light ? " 
" You know that I cannot enlighten what is wholly 
dark," is the reply. 

Wisdom does not concern itself with what is un- 
searchable, with matters transcending human ken. 

" Will my kingdom end ? " asks the Silver King. 
" Late or never." The Brazen King asks, " When shall 
I arise?" The answer is, "Soon." "With whom shall 
I combine ?" " With your elder brothers." "What 
will the youngest do ? " inquired the King. " He will 
sit down," replied the Man with the lamp. "I am 
not tired," growled the fourth King. 

The Empire, even at that date, was still tenacious 
of its sway. 

Again the Gold King asks of the Man with the lamp, 
"How many secrets knowest thou?" "Three," replied 
the man. " Which is the most important ? " asks the 
Silver King. " The open secret," the man replies. 

It sometimes happens that a truth, or conviction, 
is, as we say, " in the air," before the word which for- 
mulates it has been spoken ; it is an open secret. 
Thus, in the closing months of 1860, " Secession " was 
in the air ; it was our open secret. 

" Wilt thou open it to us also ? " asks the Brazen 
King. " When I know the fourth," replied the Man. 
"I know the fourth," said the Serpent, and whispered 
something in the ear of the Man with the lamp. He 
cried with a loud voice, " The time is at hand." The 
temple resounded, the statues rang with the cry ; and 

10 



146 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



immediately the Man with the lamp vanished to the 
west, the Serpent to the east. 

Here ends the first act of this prophetic drama. 
The Man with the lamp returns to his cottage, where 
the Old Woman, his wife, greets him with loud lamen- 
tations. "Scarcely were you gone," she whimpers, 
when two impetuous travellers called ; they were 
dressed in flames, and seemed quite respectable. One 
might have taken them for Will-o'-wisps. But they 
soon began to flatter me and made impertinent ad- 
vances." " Pooh! they were only chaffing you. Con- 
sidering your age, my dear, they could n't have meant 
anything serious " " My age indeed! always my age ! 
How old am I then ? But I know one thing. Just 
look at these walls ! See the bare stones ! They have 
licked off all the gold; and when they had done it, 
they dropped gold pieces about. Our dear pug swal- 
lowed some of them, and see there, the poor creature 
lies dead." 

The Old Woman represents the Church, the ac- 
cepted, traditional religion. There is a beautiful fitness 
in this symbolism. Science and religion, knowledge 
and faith, are mutually complemental in human life. 
The little pug may mean some pet dogma of the 
Church ; Baumgart suggests belief in the supernatural, 
to which modern enlightenment (the gold of the Will- 
o'-wisps) proves fatal. The little pug dies; but a doc- 
trine wiiich perishes, which becomes obsolete as popu- 
lar belief, may become historically precious as myth. 



GOETHE'S MARCHEN. 



147 



This is what is meant when it is said, farther on, that 
the old man with his lamp changes the pug to an 
onyx. Moreover, when such myth is embraced by 
poetry, it acquires a new, transfigured, immortal life. 
Thus the gods of Greece still live, and live forever, in 
Homer's song. In this sense, with this aim, the Man 
w 7 ith the lamp sends the onyx pug to the Fair Lily, 
whose touch causes dead things to live. 

The Old Woman had incautiously promised the 
Will-o'- wisps — in order, we may suppose, to get rid 
of them — to pay their debt to the Eiver, of three 
cabbages, three artichokes, and three onions. 

But why did they visit her cottage at all, and why 
so intent on the obsolete gold on its walls ? The 
answer is, modern culture knows full well that the 
Church is the depositary of many precious truths, 
which, though no longer current in the form in which 
they were once clothed, approve and justify them- 
selves when restated and given to the world in a new 
form. So they, the New Lights, say in effect to the 
Church, " Old Lady, you are somewhat out of date ; if 
you mean to keep your place and vindicate your right 
to be, you must throw yourself into the life of the 
time, you must contribute something useful to forward 
that life. It is through you that the new philosophy 
must discharge its debt to the Eiver " (that is, to the 
life of the time). 

The Man with the lamp approves and seconds the 
commission intrusted to his wife by the Will-o'- wisps, 
and at dawn of day loads her with the cabbages, the 



148 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

artichokes, and the onions destined for the Kiver, to 
which he adds the onyx as a present to the Fair Lily. 
The first part of her mission is a failure. On her way 
to the ferry she encounters the Shadow of the blunder- 
ing Giant stretching across the plain. The Shadow 
unceremoniously puts its black fingers into her basket, 
takes out three vegetables, one of each kind, and 
thrusts them into the mouth of the Giant, who greed- 
ily devours them. 

Some freak of popular ignorance intercepts and 
impairs the practical benefit which the new cul- 
ture, through the Church, had hoped to confer on 
the age. 

The Ferryman refuses to accept the imperfect offer- 
ing as full satisfaction of the Will-o'-wisps' debt, and 
only consents at last to receive it provisionally, if 
the Old Woman will swear to make the number good 
within twenty-four hours. She is required to dip her 
hand in the stream and take the oath. She dips and 
swears. But when she withdraws her hand, behold ! 
it has turned black ; and, what is worse, has grown 
smaller, and seems likely to disappear altogether. 

The apparent dignity of the Church is impaired by 
contact with vulgar life. 

" woe ! " she cries. " My beautiful hand, which 
I have taken so much pains with and have always 
kept so nice ! What will become of me ? " The 
Ferryman tries to comfort her w 7 ith the assurance 
that, although the hand might become invisible, she 
would be able to use it all the same. "But," says 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



149 



she, " I would rather not be able to use it than not 
have it seen." 

Here is a stroke of satire on the part of the poet, 
implying that the Church cares more for the show of 
authority than for the substance. 

Sad and sullen the Old Woman takes up her bas- 
ket and bends her steps toward the abode of the Fair 
Lily. On the way she overtakes a pilgrim more 
disconsolate than herself ; a beautiful youth, with 
noble features, abundant brown locks, his breast 
covered with glittering mail, a purple cloak depend- 
ing from his shoulders. His naked feet paced the 
hot sand; profound grief appeared to render him 
insensible to external impressions. The Old Woman 
endeavors to open a conversation with him, but 
receives no encouragement. She desists with the 
apology, " You walk too slow for me, sir. I must 
hurry on, for I have to cross the Eiver on the Green 
Serpent, that I may take this present from my hus- 
band to the Fair Lilv." " You are goin^ to the Fair 
Lily," he cried ; " then our roads are the same. But 
what is this present you are bringing her ? " She 
showed him the onyx pug. " Happy beast ! " he ex- 
claimed ; " thou wilt be touched by her hands, thou 
wilt be made alive by her ; whereas the living are 
forced to stand aloof from her lest they experience a 
mournful doom. Look at me," he continued, " how 
sad my condition ! This mail which I have worn 
with honor in war, this purple which I have sought 
to merit by wise conduct, are all that is left me by 



150 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



fate, — the one a useless burden, the other an un- 
meaning decoration. Crown, sceptre, and sword are 
gone ; I am in all other respects as naked and needy 
as any son of earth. So unblest is the influence of 
her beautiful blue eyes ; they deprive all living be- 
ings of their strength, and those who are not killed 
by the touch of her hand find themselves turned 
into walking shadows/' 

This is finely conceived. The Youth, the Prince 
who has lost sceptre and sword, represents the 
Genius of Germany, once so stalwart and capable 
in action, now (at the time of Goethe's writing) 
enervated and become a melancholy dreamer from 
excessive devotion to the * Lily, that is, excessive 
Idealism ; whereby 

" Enterprises of great pith and moment 
. . . . . . their currents turn awry, 

And lose the name of action." 

Such was Germany in those days. And even later, 
Freiligrath compared her to Hamlet, in whom 

" The native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 

The travellers cross the bridge which the Serpent 
makes for them. The Serpent herself straightens 
out her bow and accompanies them. On the way 
the Will-o'-wisps, invisible in broad day, are heard 
whispering a request to the Serpent that she would 
introduce them to the Lily in the evening, as soon as 
they should be any way presentable. The Lily 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



151 



receives her visitors graciously, but with an air of 
deep dejection. She imparts to the Old Woman her 
recent affliction. While her pet Canary-bird was 
warbling its morning hymn, a Hawk appeared in the 
air and threatened to pounce upon it. The fright- 
ened creature sought refuge in its mistress's bosom, 
and, like all living things, was killed by her touch. 

The Hawk represents the newly awakened, impa- 
tient spirit of German Patriotism, which scared into 
silence the lighter lyrics of the time. 

The Old Woman presents the onyx pug, and the 
Lily is delighted with the gift. Her touch gives it 
life. She plays with it, caresses it. The melancholy 
youth who stands by and looks on is maddened with 
jealousy at the sight. " Must a nasty little beast be 
so fondled, and receive her kiss on its black snout, 
while I, her adorer, am kept at a distance ?" At 
last he can bear it no longer, and resolves to perish 
in her arms. He rushes towards her ; she, knowing 
the consequence, instinctively puts out her arms to 
ward him off, and thereby hastens the catastrophe. 
The youth falls lifeless at her feet. 

Here ends the second act. The Genius of Ger- 
many is apparently extinct. Can it be revived ? 
The third and final act foreshows its revival, — the 
political rehabilitation of Germany. I am compelled 
by want of time to omit, in what follows, many of 
the accessories, such as the female attendants of 
the Lily, the mirror, the last desperate freaks of the 



152 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE, 



Giant, etc., and to keep myself to the main thread 
of the story. 

The first object now, on the part of those inter- 
ested, is to prevent corruption, which would make 
resuscitation impossible. So the Serpent forms with 
her body a cordon around the lifeless form of the 
Youth to protect it. " Who will fetch the Man with 
the lamp ? " she cries, fearing every moment that the 
sun will set and dissolution penetrate the magic 
circle, causing the body of the Youth to fall in 
pieces. At length she espies the Hawk in the air, 
and hails the auspicious omen. 

Patriotism still lives. 

Shortly after, the Man with the lamp appears. 
" Whether I can help," he says, " I know not. The 
individual by himself cannot do much, but only he 
who, at the proper moment, combines with many." 

All who have their country's salvation at heart 
must join their forces in time of need. 

Night comes on. The Old Man glances at the stars 
and says, " We are here at the propitious hour ; let 
each do his duty and perform his part." The Serpent 
then began to stir ; she loosened her enfolding circle, 
and slid in large volumes toward the Eiver. The 
Will-o'-wisps followed. The Old Man and his Wife 
seized the basket, lifted into it the body of the Youth, 
and laid the Canary-bird upon his breast. The basket 
rose of itself into the air, and hovered over the Old 
Woman's head. She followed the Will-o'-wisps. The 
Fair Lily with the pug in her arms followed the Wo- 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



153 



man, and the Man with the lamp closed the procession. 
The Serpent bridged the Eiver for them, and then 
drew her circle again around the basket containing 
the body of the Youth. The Old Man stoops down to 
her and asks, " What are you going to do ? " " Sacri- 
fice myself," she answers, " rather than be sacrificed." 
The Man bids the Lily touch the Serpent with one 
hand and the body of the Youth with the other. She 
does so, and behold ! the Youth comes to life again, 
but not to full consciousness. Then the Serpent 
bursts asunder. Her form breaks into thousands 
upon thousands of glittering jewels. These the Man 
with the lamp gathers up and casts into the stream, 
where they afterward form a solid and permanent 
bridge. The Old Man now leads the party to the 
cave. They stand before the Temple barred with 
golden lock and bolt. The Will-o'-wisps at the bid- 
ding of the Old Man melt bolt and lock with their 
flames, and the company are in the presence of the 
four Kings. " Whence come ye ? " asks the Gold 
King. "From the world," is the reply. "Whither 
go ye ? " asked the Silver King. " Into the world." 
* What would ye with us ? " asked the Brazen King. 
" Accompany you," said the Old Man. " Who will 
govern the world ? " asked the Composite King. " He 
who stands on his feet," is the answer. " That am I," 
said the King. " We shall see," said the Old Man, 
" for the time is come." 

Then the ground beneath them began to tremble ; 
the Temple was in motion. For a few moments a fine 



154 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

shower seemed to drizzle from above. " We are now 
beneath the Kiver," said the Old Man. The Temple 
mounts upward. Suddenly a crash is heard ; planks 
and beams come through the opening of the dome. 
It is the old Ferryman's hut, which the Temple in its 
ascent had detached from the ground. It descends 
and covers the Old Man and the Youth. The wo- 
men, who find themselves excluded, beat against the 
door of the hut, which is locked. After a while the 
door and walls begin to ring with a metallic sound. 
The flame of the Old Man's lamp has converted the 
wood into silver. The very form has changed ; the 
hut has become a smaller temple, or, if you will, a 
shrine, within the larger. 

Observe the significance of this feature of the Tale. 
The hut, as was said, represents the existing govern- 
ment. New Germany is not to be the outcome of a 
violent revolution forcibly abolishing the old, but a 
natural growth receiving the old into itself, assimilat- 
ing and embodying it in a new constitution. 

When the Youth came forth from the transformed 
hut, it was in company with a man clad in a white 
robe, bearing a silver oar in his hand. This was the 
old Ferryman, now to become a functionary in the 
new State. 

As soon as the rising sun illumined the cupola of 
the Temple, the Old Man, standing between the Youth 
and the Maiden (the Lily), said with a loud voice, 
" There are three that reign on earth, Wisdom, Show, 
Force." When the first was named, up rose the Gold 



GOETHE'S MARC HEN. 



155 



King ; with the second, the Silver. The Brazen King 
was rising slowly at the sound of the third, when the 
Composite King (the Holy Eoman Empire) suddenly 
collapsed into a shapeless heap. The Man with the 
lamp now led the still half-conscious Youth to the 
Brazen King, at whose feet lay a sword. The Youth 
girded himself with it. "The sword on the left," 
said the mighty King, " the right hand free." They 
then went to the Silver King, who gave the Youth 
his sceptre, saying, "Feed the sheep." They came 
to the Gold King, who, with a look that conveyed a 
paternal blessing, crowned the Youth's head with a 
garland of oak leaves, and said, " Acknowledge the 
Highest." 

The Youth now awoke to full consciousness ; his 
eyes shone with an unutterable spirit, and his first 
word was, " Lily." He clasped the fair maiden, whose 
cheeks glowed with an inextinguishable red, and, turn- 
ing to the Old Man, said, with a glance at the three 
sacred figures, " Glorious and safe is the kingdom of 
our fathers; but you forgot the fourth power, that 
which earliest, most universal, and surest of all, rules 
the world, — the power of Love." " Love," said the 
Old Man, smiling, " does not rule, but educates. 
And that is better." 

And so the Temple stands by the Eiver. The 
Old Woman, having at the bidding of her husband 
bathed in its waves, comes forth rejuvenated and beau- 
tified. The Old Man himself looks younger. 

Husband and wife, Science and Eeligion, renew 



156 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



their nuptial vows, and pledge their troth for in- 
definite time. 

The prophecy is accomplished. What Genius pre- 
dicted ninety years ago has become fact. The Tem- 
ple stands by the Biver, the bridge is firm and wide. 
The Genius of Germany is no longer a sighing, sickly 
youth, pining after the unattainable, but, having mar- 
ried his ideal, is now embodied in the mighty Chan- 
cellor whose state-craft founded the new Empire, and 
whose word is a power among the nations. 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 157 



VI. 

GOETHE'S RELATION TO ENGLISH 
LITERATURE. 

By F. B. SANBORN. 

In that triangulation and speculative mensura- 
tion of the greatest German intellect which we have 
this year attempted, I have been assigned to a single 
field, " Goethe's Eelation to English Literature." If 
this were understood to mean the influence upon 
Goethe's own work of the antecedent literature of 
England, one could almost treat this theme as the . 
old writer did when describing Iceland. One of his 
chapters contained this and nothing more: "Chap- 
ter VI. Concerning Serpents in Iceland. There are 
no serpents in Iceland." 

When Handel, the great German musician, went 
to Ireland about 1722, he carried a letter of introduc- 
tion from some of his English Tory friends to Dean 
Swift, then living near Dublin. As soon as the 
Dean heard he was a German musician, he declined 
to see Handel ; but when his servant added that the 
bearer of the letter was " a great genius," Swift cried 
out, " What ! a genius and a German ! show him up 



158 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



this instant." Such was the reputation which the 
intellectual character of the Germans inspired in 
Great Britain thirty years before Goethe was born ; 
and such it continued through much of the lifetime 
of Frederic the Great, who made Germany so respect- 
able in matters of war and state- craft. That singular 
and useful tyrant, whose life Carlyle has so brilliantly 
related, had the greatest contempt for his country's lit- 
erature, which he would not read, and for its clumsy 
language, which he did not know how to spell. He 
had contracted this prejudice in his youth, before 
Goethe was born, and he continued in it after Goe- 
the, who even more than Handel was "a German 
and a genius," had begun to publish his youthful 
works. Goethe was born at Frankfort, outside of 
Frederic's dominions, in 1749 ; he published his first 
important work, the play of "Gotz von Berlich- 
ingen," in 1773, and about this time Frederic wrote 
an " Essay on German Literature," 1 in which he 
said : — 

"To convince yourself of the little taste which prevails 
in Germany, you need only go to our theatres ; there you 
will see the abominable works of Shakespeare exhibited, 
in German translations, while the whole audience almost 
die with delight, as they listen to ridiculous farces, 
worthy of American barbarians. Shakespeare perhaps 
may be pardoned his caprices, because the birth of an art 
is never its point of perfection ; but here we have a ' Gotz 

1 This Essay was communicated by Frederic to D'Alembert in 
January, 1781. 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 159 



von Berlichingen ' making his appearance, — a detestable 
imitation of these wretched English productions. The 
pit applauds, and enthusiastically demands a repetition 
of such disgusting dulness." 

Even in 1777, when " The Woes of Young Wer- 
ther " had captivated Europe, and " Faust " and 
" Iphigenia " were begun by Goethe, who was then 
tw T enty-eight years old, and at the height of his 
poetic creativeness, neither Frederic nor the old Vol- 
taire, who constantly wrote letters complimenting 
each other, valued this rising star in the least degree. 
Frederic wrote to Voltaire, December 17, 1777 : "As 
to works of the imagination, I am convinced that we 
must get along with Homer, Virgil, Tasso, Voltaire, 
and Ariosto ; for the human mind seems to be wither- 
ing in all countries, and no longer produces either 
fruit or flowers." Of these poets thus named the 
Prussian King preferred Voltaire, to whom he had 
written two years before : " You are the rival of 
Ariosto. We do not know much about Homer's life, 
but Virgil was nothing more than a poet. Eacine did 
not write prose well, and Milton was but the slave 
of his country's tyrant. You alone have united tal- 
ents so various." 

Yet the great Frederic, w T ith all this blindness to 
the genius that was before his aged eyes, did finally 
predict the triumph of German literature, which Goe- 
the and Schiller w T ere to create. In one of his papers, 
which first saw the light after his death, in 1786, 
appear these prophetic words : — 



160 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



" We shall have our classic authors ; our neighbors 
will study German, and it will be spoken in the courts 
of princes. Our language, polished and improved, may 
haply, in the books of great writers, extend over all 
Europe. These summer days of German literature ap- 
proach. I foretell them, but shall not see them. Age 
deprives me of this hope ; like Moses, I have a view of 
the promised land, but may not enter it." 

Frederic was, of course, as ignorant of Schiller's 
genius as of Goethe's. In 1781, the year that Schiller 
brought out his popular play, " The Eobbers," which 
still keeps the stage after a hundred years, the old 
King sent to D'Alembert, in Paris, his " Essay on Ger- 
man Literature," already cited, and in his accompany- 
ing letter said : " Our language does not deserve to 
be studied till good authors have first rendered it fa- 
mous ; and of these we are entirely destitute. They 
will perhaps appear when I am walking in the Ely- 
sian fields, where I intend to offer to Virgil the 
idyls of a German named Gesner, and the fables of 
Gellert." 

But to return. Goethe, unlike Schiller, but in this 
like Milton, whom he did not much read, drew more 
from the Greek fountain than from Shakespeare's 
"well of English undefiled"; and his " Iphigenia," like 
Milton's " Samson," follows closely in the steps of 
Greek tragedy, while his "Faust" in no way resem- 
bles the " Dr. Faustus"of Marlowe, who was Shake- 
speare's only brother in English tragedy, but has a 
rich Gothic exuberance of its own in the first part, 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 161 



and a broad philosophic conspectus, broken by strains 
of lyric melody, in its long-delayed and conf using 
conclusion. In fact, the form of Goethe's " Faust " 
is no less original, I might say individual, than his 
conception of Satan, who, as Mephistopheles, sets at 
defiance every preconceived type of the Evil One. 

Doubtless there has been no such poetical genius 
since Shakespeare as this German dramatist and poet, 
who is also novelist, art critic, man of science, and 
philosopher. But his versatility, and the whole strain 
of his genius, are not in the English manner, nor bred 
in any English school. That inward vision of thought 
and nature, — that profound conception of the world's 
symbolism, — which is so wonderful in Shakespeare, 
and in other English poets exists in a less degree, is 
coupled in Goethe's case with a plodding, patient, 
almost pedantic research into the laws and methods, 
and even the smallest details, of nature and of 
thought. Having flown to his height of imagination 
on the wings of poesy, Goethe must needs build a 
stairway therefrom downward to the merest, most 
beggarly elements ; so that he and others shall go up 
and down as they please, counting every step of the 
way. Moreover, while Shakespeare and other great 
poets content themselves with setting forth the ideal, 
— flashing it out perhaps for a single moment upon 
our mind's eye, — Goethe insists on realizing his ideal 
in every form and institution of society. In this 
respect he resembles Plato more than any of the mod- 
erns ; yet he does not resemble Bacon, that English 

11 



162 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



truncated Plato, except in some of those superficial 
points of similarity which do not touch the real 
character of the two men. Goethe, like Bacon, " took 
all knowledge to be his province " ; like Bacon, he 
delighted in state and splendor, in the completion of 
his theory until it should fill out and touch at every 
point the circumference of man's world ; but then in 
that poet's eye which, with fine frenzy, 

"Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," 

Goethe excelled the English Chancellor even more 
than he did in that terrestrial prudence or fortune 
which so handsomely convoyed him through life, 
while Bacon fell into disgrace and belittled himself 
by complaints and entreaties. Indeed, the good for- 
tune of Goethe was something almost appalling, and 
must have often made him think of Polycrates and his 
ring ; it went beyond the felicity of Shakespeare's life, 
which consisted partly in his obscurity ; while Goe- 
the was at once conspicuous and safe, — admired, and 
not ruined by admiration. Goethe suffered spiritually 
from this good fortune, and I must say that, when 
compared with the best English and American au- 
thors, the finest aroma of our literature — which pro- 
ceeds from a magnanimous and adventurous character, 
displayed now in love, now in war, now in the heroism 
of private life or in the sanctities of religion — is per- 
petually wanting in Goethe. I do not speak now of 
Shakespeare, in whom this magnanimity had its wid- 
est and highest range, but of lesser poets and prose 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 163 



writers, who sometimes in very humble spheres of lit- 
erature display the same winning quality. It is this 
which gives immortality to Sidney's youthful essays in 
verse and prose, — which makes Herbert memorable, 
Marvell more than a wit, and poor Dryden respect- 
able even in his degradations ; this gleams in Donne 
and Jeremy Taylor, in Gray and Dr. Johnson ; in 
Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron ; in Burns and 
Carlyle among the Scotch, and among Americans 
in Thoreau and Emerson, in Walt Whitman, and 
others of less note. It is by virtue of an untam- 
able energy that English literature is capable of 
rising so high, and sinking so low, and is incapable 
of that measured and deliberate excellence of which 
the books of Plato and of Goethe are perhaps the 
best examples. 

In the writings of Goethe, not less than in his life, 
we see the limitations which egoism imposes, and 
which not his great genius even could remove. 
" A man," said Cromwell to the French Ambassador, 
"never rises' so high as when he knows not whither 
he is going." Although Goethe would fain fol- 
low his intuitions, and yield himself to the impulse 
of the moment, his very intuitions had prudence 
and self-love in them, so firmly implanted that 
he could never escape from worldly considerations. 
But the old belief of mankind is wisest, which 
declares that the poet's inspiration is greater than 
any worldly prudence, and that the oracles are 
sincere. 



164 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Goethe's relation to German literature was some- 
thing different from Shakespeare's relation, to our 
own, of which he is the head and front, but which 
he did not create, nor did he sustain it in his own 
time. Without Shakespeare there would still have 
been an important and universal English literature, 
though it would be far less significant and poetic 
than it is. Without Goethe, not only would the 
literature of his fatherland be less poetic and less 
significant, but it would not have extended so 
swiftly over Europe, and led to that rapid exten- 
sion of German philosophy, and German science also, 
which our century, now closing, has seen and prof- 
ited by. Goethe lived to be nearly as old as Voltaire, 
dying in 1832, at the age of eighty-two; and his 
period of authorship covered more than sixty of those 
years. His greatest work, " Faust," was only com- 
pleted in its present form a short time before his 
death; his next greatest book, "Wilhelm Meister," 
was in fact left unfinished, although he had been at 
work on it for thirty years. Besides these books, 
which are everywhere known, he published more 
than forty other volumes ; while his letters and con- 
versations, printed since his death, and his manu- 
scripts at Weimar, soon to be published, will make 
twenty or thirty volumes more. Hardly any author, 
even in Germany, has written so much ; and no Ger- 
man author — not even Luther, whose books are the 
foundation of German prose literature — is now so 
indispensable to those who would know what Ger- 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 165 



many has thought, or what modern culture is and has 
been for a hundred years past. He is the greatest 
poet, though not the best dramatist, of Germany ; 
and he is one of the few great prose- writers in a lan- 
guage that does not readily lend itself, as the French 
does, to graceful prose, or, as the English does, to 
vigorous and picturesque prose. 

When Goethe began to study and to write, — and it 
is hard to say which came first with him, — the litera- 
tures that lay before him as models were the Greek, 
the Latin, the French, the Italian, and the English ; 
in later years, he tasted something of the Oriental 
thought and literature. Of all these we should hold 
that English literature was the greatest, when Shake- 
speare is taken into account, — as he was, and very 
fully, by Goethe, — yet the Greek, the Latin, and espe- 
cially the French, exercised apparently a more potent 
sway over the young poet's mind, and were better 
known to him. For it is difficult to find in Goethe's 
fifty volumes any serious traces of English influence 
from the literary side, although he read and admired 
Shakespeare and Marlowe, knew something of Bacon, 
Newton, and Milton, praised Goldsmith, and extended 
a respectful patronage towards Byron. But it is im- 
possible to say that English literature impressed him 
and moulded his own work as did the classical litera- 
ture, the Oriental, or even the French and Italian. In 
this respect, as in so many others, he presents a con- 
trast to Schiller, who was deeply influenced in his 
dramatic forms of expression by Shakespeare, as he 



166 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE, 



was by Kant in his philosophic theories and rules 
of criticism. 1 

If ever men are self-forgetful, it is when they are 
in love, — at least for a brief period of that passion, — 
and it is the magnanimity thence proceeding which 
gives worth and dignity to characters otherwise friv- 
olous or brutal, like those of Antony and Cleopatra, 
who, like Othello, " loved not wisely but too well." 
Goethe, as Dr. Bartol has said, loved not well enough, 
but too wisely ; he lacked that magnanimity which 
men and women much less gifted have displayed in 
their affection, though himself magnanimous in the 
other relations of life. And I must accuse him of 
another great fault, which he never learned of the 
English poets ; he would " kiss and tell." Shake- 
speare has so well disguised his affairs of the heart, 
that it will always remain a question, not only whom 
he loved, but whether it was love or friendship of 
which he wrote so wonderfully; but Goethe has 
related what he should not about Gretchen, and 

1 It should be remembered that Kant, the greatest of all the Ger- 
man philosophical writers, was an older contemporary of Schiller and 
of Goethe, having been born at Konigsberg in 1724, a quarter- century 
before Goethe, and dying there in 1804, the year before Schiller's 
premature death. There was another person of the same name at 
Konigsberg earlier, whom Frederick the Great praised (in 1739 ) for 
his eloquence, and his graceful use of the awkward German lan- 
guage, saying : "I confess I never heard better German, more beau- 
tiful phrases, nor a style more flowing and embellished. M. Kant 
is, past dispute, the first man in the kingdom for uttering nonsense 
with dignity." See Frederic's letter to Jordan, August 3, 1739. 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 167 



Annette, and Emilia, and Lucinda, and Frederica, and 
Heaven knows how many more. To be sure, he has 
givpn them an immortality thereby, and by ideal- 
izing them in his plays, and novels, and poems ; but 
even there we feel that he has taken an unfair ad- 
vantage of these fair ones, by drawing their pictures 
for the world to see, when they were turning their 
faces toward him alone. Whether these love affairs 
were innocent or not, — and I am disposed to give 
them always the most favorable construction, — there 
is here a betrayal of confidence, against which one of 
the minor English poets of Shakespeare's time had 
warned him. Donne says : — 

" If, as I have, you also do 
"Virtue in woman see, 
And dare love that, and say so too, 
And forget the He and She, — 

"And if this love, though placed so, 
From profane men you hide, 
Who will no faith on this bestow, 
Or, if they do, deride, — 

" Then you have done a braver thing 
Than all the Worthies did, 
And a braver thence will spring, 
Which is, to keep that hid." 

Goethe was born of a wealthy burgher family in 
Frankfort, ten years before Schiller ; and they both 
grew to manhood at a time when England, through 
Pitt and his son, had much to say and do in the 



168 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



affairs of Germany. Yet the connection of the two 
countries in literary matters was of the slightest. 

" Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns," — 

and the great abyss that is fixed between the senti- 
ments and daily opinions of Germany and England 
was quite as wide when England had a German king 
as it is to-day. France was nearer spiritually, as 
well as geographically, and we find the young Goethe 
far more affected by French than by English books. 
He read Shakespeare early, and felt his vast powers ; 
he also read Eichardson and Goldsmith, and found 
pleasure, perhaps inspiration, in " The Vicar of Wake- 
field " ; but the daily influence of French thought 
and the French style did more to modify the strong 
native impulses of Goethe than any impressions that 
came to him from England. No sooner did he begin 
to become known in England however, than he ex- 
erted an influence of his own on English literature, 
which has been growing stronger ever since, and has 
had some remarkable results, — chiefly by indirect 
radiation through Carlyle, Emerson, Matthew Arnold, 
and a host of lesser writers or translators. The first 
and most eminent of his translators, until Carlyle 
appeared, w T as Walter Scott, who, in 1799, published 
in Edinburgh a version of " Gotz von Berlichingen," 
which Goethe himself had published twenty-six 
years before. In itself this play is of little value, 
as compared with the later works of Goethe ; but 
it has a peculiar significance, as the first of those 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 169 

feudal romances which, forty years afterwards, in the 
hands of Scott, became such an important part of 
European literature. 

The real work of Goethe, indeed, was not to vary 
the existing forms of literature, however much he 
might do this, but to inspire in all literature a deep 
conviction of the unity of Nature and the absolute 
activity of spirit. This, once done, is nothing less 
than regeneration of the inner life of literature, which 
may thenceforth take any form, old or new, and yet 
be true to the inworking spirit. Carlyle seems to 
have been the first of British writers to seize this 
perception of Goethe's mission, and he was certainly 
the first to enforce and insist upon it in ways that 
soon wrought an actual, if incipient, revival in the 
English-speaking world of letters. With him was soon 
associated our own Emerson, who, arriving at the 
same insight, not through Goethe's illumination, but 
by his own, nevertheless found his inward light ex- 
tended and clarified by the writings of both Goethe 
and Carlyle. The period of Goethe's death (March, 
1832) may be taken as the time when Carlyle and 
Emerson distinctly perceived that they stood at the 
opening of a new era ; and it was not long after- 
wards, when they met at Craigenputtock, that they 
also became aware of the unity existing between 
them upon vital issues, and that they were appointed 
to carry forward Goethe's work in their own lands, 
and with reinforcement of each other. What Car- 
lyle thought at Goethe's death he has left on record, 



170 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



and we may be sure that in essentials Emerson 
would have said the same things. Carlyle wrote in 
" The New Monthly Magazine " for 1832 : — 

" So then our Greatest has departed. That melody 
of life, with its cunning tones, which took captive ear and 
heart, has gone silent: the heavenly force that dwelt 
here, victorious over so much, is here no longer; thus 
far, not farther, shall the wise man, by speech and by 
act, utter himself forth. . . . Goethe, it is commonly said, 
made a new era in literature ; a Poetic Era began with 
him, the end or ulterior tendencies of which are yet no- 
wise generally visible. This common saying is a true one ; 
and true with a far deeper meaning than, to the most, it 
conveys. ... It begins now to be everywhere surmised 
that the real force, which in this world all things must 
obey, is Insight, Spiritual Vision and Determination. 
The Thought is parent of the Deed, nay, is living soul 
of it, and last and continual, as well as first mover of it ; 
is the foundation, beginning, and essence, therefore, of 
Man's whole existence here below. .The true sovereign 
of the world, who moulds the world, like soft wax, accord- 
ing to his pleasure, is he who lovingly sees into the world ; 
the inspired thinker, whom in these days we name Poet. 
The true sovereign is the Wise Man." 

Some years later, Emerson added his testimony as 
follows : — 

" The Greeks said, Alexander went as far as Chaos ; 
Goethe vyent, only the other day, as far; and one step 
farther he hazarded and brought himself back. He has 
clothed our modern existence with poetry. Amid little- 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 171 



ness and detail, he detected the genius of life, the old 
cunning Proteus, nestling close beside us, and showed 
that the dulness and prose we ascribe to the age was 
only another of his masks. 

* His very flight is presence in disguise.' 

Goethe, the head and body of the German nation, does 
not speak from talent, but the truth shines through ; he 
is very wise, though his talent often veils his wisdom. 
However excellent his sentence is, he has somewhat better 
in view. The old Eternal Genius who built the world has 
confided himself more to this man than to any other.' 1 

Emerson is not always to be construed literally, 
any more than other poets are, — and he did not mean 
to say that Goethe was nearer to the old Eternal 
Genius than Shakespeare had been. His portrait of 
these two men, side by side, was given to the world 
later, (in 1867,) in those remarkable verses called 
"Solution," in which he guesses the riddle of the 
Muse who asks, — 

" Have you eyes to find the five 
Which five hundred did survive ? " 

Yes, says Emerson, the five great writers are Homer, 
Dante, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, and Goethe; and 
thus he portrays the English and the German poet : — 

" Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur, 
Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, 
England's genius filled all measure 
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, 
Gave to the mind its emperor, 
And life was larger than before ; 



172 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Nor sequent centuries could hit 
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. 
The men who lived with him became 
Poets, for the air was fame. 

" In newer days of war and trade, 
Eomance forgot and faith decayed, 
"When Science armed and guided war, 
And clerks the Janus-gates unbar, — 
"When France, where poet never grew, 
Halved and dealt the globe anew, — 
Goethe, raised o'er joy and strife, 
Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life, 
And brought Olympian wisdom down 
To court and mart, to gown and town ; 
Stooping, his finger wrote in clay 
The open secret of to-day." 

Among the friends of Emerson, while he was study- 
ing Goethe, none was more intimate than Mr. Alcott, 
whose diaries preserve much that was common to the 
thought of the two friends. I will therefore read 
from the diaries of 1847 and later years some of his 
comments on Goethe as he read him from time to 
time. Mr. Alcott writes (date uncertain) : — 

"Life is but a Werther's Sorrows to many, with an 
end as tragical; nor can it be otherwise till we come 
forth from our woes to speak peace to the wallers. The 
chaos about us is but the confusion within us ; first place 
ourself, and all things then take place around us. Hith- 
erto, for the most part, men have been bad economists 
of life, and spendthrifts of themselves. Few have de- 
served the epithet ' illustrious/ — and yet life itself 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 173 



raio'ht be a lustre so dazzling that to have hidden its 
flame were almost to quench it." 

(1847.) " Goethe has treated the strife of the worst for 
the best, in nature, more cunningly than either of his pre- 
decessors, Moses or the author of the Uzzian Job. And 
for this old-world fable he was better fitted than any one 
of his time. He has an eye for subtleties. He is a dis- 
cerner of spirits, a draughtsman of guile. His faith in 
nature was so entire that it held all fine gifts at his ser- 
vice, nor could he, fortified and equipped as was his genius, 
but render faithful copies of what he so clearly saw 
and learned to portray. 6 The demons sat to him/ and 
we have before us the world he knew so well, and also the 
one in which almost all are conversant. For this demon 
of the temptation is as old as man, and thus far the catas- 
trophe has been disastrous to individuals in conflict with 
multitudes. None has come off victorious with his life ; 
the world-spirit, Mephistopheles, bribing even the Faust, 
or the will, proffering the present delights for the future 
pains as at first. 5 1 

(1851.) " Dipped here and there into ' Faust' (Anna 
Swan wick's translation), and am admitted more intimately 
than by Hayward's or Anster's version into the subtleties 
of the modern Satan, the world-spirit of the nineteenth 
century. Our devil has partaken of the cosmopolitan 
culture; he, too, is a scholar and a gentleman, scarcely 
distinguishable in a crowd from any mortal else, — his 
complexion sallower by a shade, perhaps, and, if surveyed 
closely, some show of hoofs in his boots. . . . Faust's 
dealings with him are infinitely suggestive and profitable, 
and inclusive of the whole range of guile. * The demon 



174 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



sat gladly/ — the portrait is sketched by a master, and 
is exhaustive of the subject. Goethe knew too much to 
paint well anything else ; and this, his masterpiece, re- 
mains as the last likeness, finished up to the latest dates. 
Yet he lived too early to sketch this Western democratic 
shape, some fifty or more years later. Apropos of him, 
just now and here in this Western hemisphere every- 
body is putting down the dark Webster as the latest and 
best devil, concrete and astir in space perhaps, — certainly 
in these American parts, — clearly responsible for the sin§ 
of cities, North and South, — a Satan of national type and 
symmetry. 'T is a great pity that Goethe should have 
come too soon. Head, shoulders, all, all of Webster 
should have gone into the picture, and this legal, logical, 
constitutional Mephistopheles of the States had justice 
done him by his master. . . . Perhaps Goethe is the most 
remarkable instance in literature of an intellect hold- 
ing its eye quite coincident with the plane of things, — 
endowed likewise with an aptitude to seize at the nick of 
time every aspect of the demonic forces, as these emerged 
from their hidings in Nature. But he was held, by con- 
sequence, to the mundane plane and the fatal moment, — 
an intellectual describer, but never a partaker at heart of 
what he saw and sketched so inimitably. His aloofness 
from life and from the spirit of permanence ; his inability 
to identify himself with the heart and whole of things, 
the soul of souls; the duplicity of his genius, one may 
say, left him the sport of a cunning which partook, at 
once, of the fate that drives, and of the freedom that 
controls life's motions. We feel that this eye, mighty as 
it is and miraculous, escapes not the spell that holds it 
fixedly on the features he is portraying. There is never 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 175 



the elevation of lid and fluency of light, telling of rap- 
tures and of the world's saints, seen and felt, — the sure 
sign of victories won from nature and one's self. Goethe 
was cunning, but he was never wisely wise. Too noble 
for mere prudence, he was coeval with fate; but never 
magnanimous and Fate's victor ; and as the Fates made, 
so they slew him too, but by incantations soft, siren-like, 
and prolonged, melodizing his muse, and intimating (al- 
most persuading us the while) his claim to a perpetuity 
of genius which was not theirs to give. All he was his 
Faust has taken and celebrates. Faust is admitted 
to heaven as Goethe to mortality, without the fee of a 
divinity which alone opens honestly the gates. So the 
clandestine wins by defeats, from the beginning of evil till 
its ending here." 

(1851.) " There is adequate justification for Goethe's 
treatment of Evil in his great poem, about which so much 
has been said and written, — most of this quite wide of its 
drift and province. It is one of the auspicious signs of 
these latter times that men are beginning to canvass and 
account for everything that turns up in the world. Noth- 
ing remains unquestioned ; the popular inquiry is, ' Who 
are you ] what are you here for ? Account for your ex- 
istence, — show us, on penalty of forfeiting it, what right 
you have to be, — and away with you, if you cannot do 
it ! ' Even the Devil, his place and functions in the 
world, are under discussion, and he too will have to 
show what he is here for, or quit forthwith. That is a 
question altogether new, first raised on its proper grounds 
and poetically argued by Goethe in the 1 Faust/ But 
now the thinkers everywhere are fast hold of it ; and it 



176 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



must render up its secret, so long hidden from the faith 
of men. Modern judgments seem to be far more tolerant 
of the Devil than at any former period of the world ; his 
claims are fairly admitted, and his right to be here and 
take part in mundane affairs is unquestionable. Toler- 
ance is taking place of the old prejudices, and it is be- 
coming quite evident that his presence is indispensable. 
The most enlightened minds go still further, entering 
fearlessly into the darker counsels of Providence, and re- 
lieving the old superstitions by some sensible and even 
religious reasons for his existence and place in nature. 
Say what we will to the contrary, — and it is creditable to 
the heart of man that it does doubt the final necessity of 
his existence and functions, and proves these only tran- 
sient and mediatorial, — the Devil is felt to be a vast ben- 
efit to the present multitude, who could not get on at all 
without him. The Lord needs and so suffers an agent 
for the administrative ends of mortality, — a whipper 
in and secretary. The Devil is a friend in the guise of 
an enemy. We need him to measure our strength and 
weakness, to prove our virtue. Life, for the most part, 
is a contest, a devil's duel, with seconds few or many 
to provoke and stand sponsor for us, to each according 
to his mettle and provocation. An imp or two, if no 
more, is pitted against every one of us, — is one of us, 
if we knew" it. To some there are seven of them, we 
read, and our merits and demerits are measured pre- 
cisely by our management of the enemy, whether one 
or many." 

In these remarks of Mr. Alcott reference is con- 
stantly made to that dramatic poem of Goethe's which 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE, 177 

he had just been reading, "Faust," in which the Sa- 
tanic element is shown as constantly present in a 
modern and realistic guise. Shakespeare, except in 
his " Othello," has hardly treated this theme at all ; 
nor is there much common ground in the subjects 
chosen by these two great poets. Goethe was above 
all things wise, and in nothing does his wisdom ap- 
pear more striking than in his estimate of Shake- 
speare as far above himself, and in his fixed resolve 
not to imitate one so unlike. He might almost 
have used in this connection the pregnant query of 
Emerson, " Why should I forego my own excellence 
to come short of Shakespeare's ?" He had gifts of his 
own, many and great ones, — but not those of Shake- 
speare, whose nature was in so many points the op- 
posite of his own. Ben Jonson could not measure 
Shakespeare, but he saw him, and in some particulars 
has well described him, in terms that could never be 
applied to Goethe : — 

" The players have often mentioned it as an honor to 
Shakespeare," says Jonson in his Discoveries, " that he 
never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would 
he had blotted a thousand ! which they thought a malevo- 
lent speech, who chose that circumstance to commend 
their friend by, wherein he most faulted. He was indeed 
honest, and of an open and free nature ; had an excellent 
fantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions ; wherein 
he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was neces- 
sary he should be stopped. His wit was in his own 
power : would the rule of it had been so too." 

12 



178 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



It could never be said of Goethe that he had not 
the rule of his own wit in his own power; for no 
man of genius was ever so deliberate and methodical. 
Jonson acids, — with that tone of patronage which the 
intervening centuries have made so amusing to us, — 
" But Shakespeare redeemed his vices with his vir- 
tues. There was ever more in him to be praised than 
to be pardoned." This mild encomium is increasingly- 
true of Goethe, as we withdraw more and more from 
the immediate conditions of his life, and judge him by 
the standards of genius and of benefit to mankind. 
Tested by these, Goethe must be greatly praised, 
and his influence on English literature, whether in- 
direct or direct, has been every way salutary. For 
Goethe, even where he is pedantic, is profound ; wher- 
ever he deals in small and trivial concerns, there is 
something just and wholesome in his method, and 
though he may check and discountenance spontaneity, 
this can do little harm to our literature, w 7 hich is 
spontaneous rather than profound, except in those 
rare examples like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Words- 
worth, where it is both profound and spontaneous. 

I do not find that Goethe had any knowledge of 
Chaucer ; yet of all English authors this ancient 
poet was the nearest to Goethe's serene and tolerant 
temper, and he rose too, as Goethe did in Germany, 
from a dead level of mediocrity in his own age, to 
the very heights of humor and insight. There is a 
just judgment on this good old poet by Sir Philip Sid- 
ney which deserves to be quoted, — written in 1581, 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 179 



and found in his " Defence of Poesy." " Chaucer," 
says Sidney, " undoubtedly did excellently in his 
Troilus and Cressida ; of whom, truly, I know not 
whether to marvel more, either that he, in that misty 
time, could see so clearly, or that we, in this clear 
age, go so stumblingly after him." 

One was soon to come who would no longer stum- 
ble in following Chaucer, but would overtake and 
pass him by, so that even Shakespeare's contem- 
poraries would have no doubt what his rank was. 
An obscure poet of that period, of whom we know 
almost as little as of Shakespeare himself, William 
Basse by name, commemorated Shakespeare's death 
in 1616 by this elegy, which is one of the best, though 
seldom quoted : — 

" Kenowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh 
To learned Chaucer ; and, rare Beaumont, lie 
A little nearer Spenser, to make room 
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. 
But. if precedency in death doth bar 
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre, 
Under this sable marble of thine own, 
Sleep, rare tragedian, Shakespeare ! sleep alone : 
Thy unmolested peace in unshared cave 
Possess as lord, not tenant of thy grave. 
That unto us and others it may be 
Honor hereafter to be laid by thee." 

Here the elegist recognizes, what time has fully 
attested, that Shakespeare is the lord paramount of 
English literature, holding a rank higher than Beau- 
mont's, or Spenser's, or Chaucer's. A similar rank 
must be given, and has long been joyfully conceded, 



180 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



to Goethe, among German writers. I do not agree 
with Dr. Bartol in the comparison which he drew 
between Schiller and Goethe, so disparaging to the 
former ; but it is in accord with that severe Scripture 
which says, "To him that hath shall be given, and 
from him that hath not shall be taken away/' In the 
higher meaning of poetic greatness, Schiller " hath 
not," and therefore must surrender some part of his 
recent or present renown to the more masculine and 
original Goethe. In one respect, however, and an 
important one, he will always be superior to his 
friend, — in his recognition of that wholesome sexual 
morality which Goethe at all times considered too 
lightly, and in his youth and middle life so habitu- 
ally transgressed. It will be long before English and 
American literature becomes accustomed to the tone of 
Goethe on this subject, — a coarse and worldly habit 
of mind, which came to him partly by nature, and 
partly from the French, Latin, and Greek books which 
he read in his youth far more than he read the better 
English or German authors. Indeed, there were few 
good German authors before Goethe and accessible 
to him; while Ovid and Catullus and Martial and 
the Greek poets, were open to him, and the amusing 
literature of France was in every German house- 
hold where books were read at all. Goethe brings it 
almost as an accusation against Herder at Strassburg, 
that he made him think less favorably of Ovid than 
Goethe had been accustomed; but the "Boman Ele- 
gies," written at the age of thirty-eight, show that Ovid 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 181 

was then his model much more than Herder. He had 
studied the more profound classical poets with profit, 
and his most perfect drama, so far as form and lan- 
guage go, — the " Iphigenia in Tauris," — is the best 
result of this part of his education. It would be 
impossible to find in English literature so vivid a 
reproduction of the antique spirit, reinforced by the 
veracity of the Teuton, as this drama exhibits. Mil- 
ton's " Samson," which in some points may be com- 
pared with it, is so strongly Hebraized that it little 
resembles in spirit the Greek dramas on which its 
form was modelled ; while the " Prometheus 99 of Shel- 
ley, the "Atalanta" of Swinburne, and the pseudo- 
classical poems of Landor and of Browning, almost 
wholly lack the calm dignity of Goethe's " Iphigenia," 
As those who have preceded me have made little men- 
tion of this drama, I will quote a single passage in 
the earliest American translation, that of Dr. Froth- 
ingham of Boston, made some fifty years ago, when 
Goethe was almost an unknown name in America. 

song of the paroe in "iphigenia." 

Iphigenia (soliloqidzing) . 

Within my ears resounds that ancient song, — 

Forgotten was it, and forgotten gladly, — 

Song of the Parcae, which they shuddering sang 

"When Tantalus fell from his golden seat. 

They suffered with their noble friend, — indignant 

Their bosom was, and terrible their song. 

To me and to my sisters in our youth 

The nurse would sing it, — and I marked it well. 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



THE SONG. 

" The gods be your terror, 
Ye children of men ! 
They hold the dominion 
In hands everlasting, 
All free to exert it 
As listeth their will. 

"Let him fear them doubly 
Whome'er they Ve exalted! 
On crags and on cloud-piles 
The altars are planted 
Around the gold tables. 

" Dissension arises; 
Then tumble the feasters 
Keviled and dishonored 
In gulfs of deep midnight; 
And look ever vainly 
In fetters of darkness 
For judgment that 's just. 

" But They remain seated 
At feasts never failing 
Around the gold tables. 
They stride at a footstep 
From mountain to mountain; 
Through jaws of abysses 
Steams toward them the breathing 
Of suffocate Titans 
Like offerings of incense, — 
A light-rising vapor. 

" They turn — the proud masters — 
From whole generations 
The eye of their blessing, — 
Nor will in the children 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 183 



The once well-beloved 
Still eloquent features 
Of ancestors see." 

So sang the dark sisters ! 
The old exile heareth 
That terrible music 
In caverns of darkness,-— 
Rernembereth his children, 
And shaketh his head. 

The Greek doctrine of divine vengeance and of 
irresistible destiny here set forth, (but which is beau- 
tifully softened in the play by the devotion and truth- 
fulness of Xphigenia,) has scarcely found an entrance 
into English literature, where tragedy assumes a char- 
acter more personal. The deepest sufferings of Shake- 
speare's heroes grow out of their own acts, and are 
not the result of foreordained or inherited guilt, as we 
may see in " King Lear " and " Othello." Goethe also 
gives this personal turn to all the tragedy which he 
brings forward ; but his " Iphigenia/' with its deep 
realization of the antique tragic motives, may serve 
as a connecting link between ancient and modern 
tragedy. And so strong in his mind was the ancient 
form of presentation, that he adopted it to some extent 
in his next important work, his " Tasso," — which was 
mainly written in Rome, in 1786-88, as the "Iphi- 
genia " was finished and privately brought out there. 
His " Egmont," on the other hand, the most dramatic 
of his plays, but far from the best, has nothing of the 
antique about it ; and still less has the first part of 



184 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

" Faust," which, though dramatic in form, is rather a 
succession of declamations, spectacles, and songs, than 
a drama, strictly speaking. This fits it for operatic 
representation, in which it is most successfully and 
constantly given to the public. In itself, as a closet 
drama, or what Mr. Snider calls a " literary Bible," it 
is extremely foreign to the English and American 
mind, and there is nothing really akin to it in our 
literature, notwithstanding Marlowe's " Dr. Faustus " 
and the octogenarian Philip Bailey's " Festus," — 
w r hich was " Faust " emasculated, trimmed and scented 
and sent forth on a harmless round among the circu- 
lating libraries, forty years ago. 

Mr. Snider has so well set forth the origin and 
spirit of the Faust legend, and this exposition has 
been so well supplemented by Mr. Davidson, that I 
need only call attention to the manner in which it 
burst forth in English literature, — a single flash and 
explosion of flame and smoke from the Titanic cave 
of Christopher Marlowe's genius. This man — who, 
if he had lived, might have disputed Shakespeare's 
pre-eminence in dramatic poetry, as he was in fact 
Shakespeare's teacher and coadjutor during their hot 
youth in London — seems to have caught at the 
Faust myth almost as soon as it appeared anywhere 
in Europe in a printed form — though it had circu- 
lated from mouth to mouth at universities and among 
the people for more than half a century, when, in 
1587, there appeared at Frankfort the "History of 
Dr. Johann Faust, the far-famed [weitbeschreiter] Sor- 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 185 



cerer and Black- Artist [Schwarzkunstler]" From 
an English translation of this book, made in 1592, 
Marlowe is supposed to have taken his play, "The 
Tragical History of Dr. Faustus," which must have 
been written in 1592-93, for in June, 1593, Marlowe 
was killed in a tavern brawl. This fact and Mar- 
lowe's own character, which was that of an unbe- 
liever and sensualist, gives a peculiar significance to 
his version of the Faust myth, which Goethe had 
thoughts of translating into German. Crabbe Eob- 
inson, when visiting Goethe in 1829, read to the old 
poet for the first time Milton's " Samson," and men- 
tioned Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus." Goethe did not 
admire Milton so much as Byron, but of Marlowe's 
play he said, bursting out into an exclamation of 
praise, " How greatly is it all planned ! " 1 The Diary 
of Crabbe Bobinson, and the remarks and letters of 
Goethe after the visits of this indefatigable English- 
man in 1829, give some anecdotes and remarks 
which will show how imperfect was Goethe's knowl- 
edge of English authors. Bobinson says : — 

" I took an opportunity to mention Milton, and found 
Goethe unacquainted with 6 Samson Agonistes.* I read 
to him the first part, to the end of the scene with Da- 
lila. He fully conceived the spirit of it, though he did 

1 It is curious that Meissner in his recent book, "English. Actors 
of Shakespeare's Time in Austria," not only proves that Marlowe's 
" Dr. Faustus " in a German version was played at Gratz in 1608, 
but offers evidence to show that it was played in Frankfort in the 
autumn of 1592. 



186 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



not praise Milton with the warmth with which he eulo- 
gized Byron, of whom he said that c the like would never 
come again ; he was inimitable.' Even Ariosto was not so 
daring as Byron in the 6 Vision of Judgment.' Goethe 
preferred to all the other serious poems of Byron the 
6 Heaven and Earth/ though it seemed almost satire 
when he exclaimed, 'A bishop might have written it.' 
He added : ' Byron should have lived to execute his voca- 
tion, — to dramatize the Old Testament. What a subject 
under his hands would the Tower of Babel have been ! 
Byron was indebted for the profound views he took of 
the Bible to the ennui he suffered from it at school.' . . . 
It was with reference to the poems of the Old Testa- 
ment that Goethe praised the views which Byron took of 
Nature ; they were equally profound and poetical. ' He 
had not, like me, devoted a long life to the study of 
Nature, and yet in all his works I found but two or 
three passages I could have wished to alter.' " Robinson 
objected to the then common comparison of Manfred 
to Faust, and said, " Faust had nothing left but to 
sell his soul to the Devil, when he had exhausted all 
the resources of science in vain ; but Manfred's was a 
poor reason, — his passion for Astarte." Goethe smiled 
and said, " That is true." But then he fell back on the 
indomitable spirit of Manfred. Even at • the last he was 
not conquered. And the impudence of Byron's satire he 
felt and enjoyed. Robinson pointed out " The Deformed 
Transformed" as really an imitation of "Faust," and 
Goethe especially praised that piece. Byron's verses on 
George IV., he said, were the sublime of hatred. 

Returning to Milton, Goethe said to Robinson, as after- 
wards to Zelter, " Samson's confession of his guilt is in a 



GOETHE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE. 187 

better spirit than anything in Byron. There is fine logic 
in all the speeches. Dalila's vindication of herself is 
capital ; he has put her in the right." To one of Sam- 
son's speeches he cried out, " the parson ! " He thanked 
Eobinson for making him acquainted with the " Samson/' 
saying, " It gives me a higher opinion of Milton than I 
had before ; it lets me more into the nature of his mind 
than any other of his works." To Zelter he wrote that 
"in Samson we acquire knowledge of a predecessor of 
Lord Byron who is as grand and comprehensive as Byron 
himself; but then the successor is as vast and wildly 
varied as the other appears simple and stately.' 7 Again 
he said, that " he never before met with so perfect an 
imitation of the antique in style and spirit" as in the 
11 Samson." He told Eobinson that Schiller's rendering 
of the witch-scenes in Macbeth was " detestable," — "but 
that was his way. You must let every man have his 
own character." 

I do not find that Goethe had much to say of 
Landor, the man of England who most resembled 
him in some traits, and who valued highly and early, 
for an Englishman, the greatness of Goethe. Tn 
1819, Southey wrote to Lanclor that a contributor 
to the county paper had spoken of Landor in " The 
Westmoreland Gazette " as the English poet who 
most resembled Goethe ; adding, " I do not know 
enough of Goethe to judge how far this, assertion 
may be right." Considering that Southey was the 
poet-laureate of England, and Goethe then seventy 
years old, the remark indicates how far apart were 



188 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



English and German literature when Caiiyle began 
to write. Landor did not read the "Iphigenia" till 
after Goethe's death, when he praised and criticised 
it. In 1837 he said of Goethe : "He was the wisest 
man of his time, as he was the most poetical. Drops 
hang from every work of Goethe's (that I have seen) 
of the very purest brightness, such as will never dry 
up nor fall. I admire much of his poetry and all his 
prose.'' 

It is a pity that these two men could not have 
known each other, living as they did for half a cen- 
tury within a few hundred miles, and both engaged 
in the lonely pursuits of thought and imagination. 
They were not too much alike to have quarrelled, — 
except as Landor quarrelled with everybody, — while 
Goethe would have met that pettish trait by his 
wise habit of quarrelling with nobody. The English- 
man, true to his national character, had more mag- 
nanimity, but ill-regulated ; the German had more 
wisdom, and deserved better than Landor that clos- 
ing epigram which the Englishman wrote on him- 
self, — styling it "The Dying Speech of an Old 
Philosopher " : — 

" I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ; 
Nature I loved, and next to Nature .Art. 
I warmed both hands against the fire of life, — 
It sinks, and I am ready to depart." 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT, 



189 



VII. 

GOETHE AS A PLAYWBIGHT. 

By WILLIAM OKDWAY PARTRIDGE. 

We may affirm without arrogance that we of the 
present day are better informed with regard to the 
highest artistic effects of the drama and the use of 
technical methods than were Lessing, Schiller, and 
Goethe. These are the words of Gustav Freitag, a 
German writer standing in all but the first rank of 
literary men and dramatists, and in the very foremost 
rank of dramatic critics. In writing a criticism upon 
the work of a man of Goethe's eminence, some part 
of which, at least, must be unfavorable, one is fain to 
take refuge under the shield of so great a critic, and 
thus avoid all possible charge of arrogance. Not 
only as a shield, however, have I quoted the above 
passage; it is of great significance as pointing out 
the two distinguishing characteristics of the suc- 
cessful playwright : (1.) A clear conception of high- 
est artistic effects ; (2.) The power to apply the best 
technical methods for the production of these. 

We must here make a careful distinction between 
a playwright and a playwriter. And in the present 



190 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



paper we wish especially to insist upon this dis- 
tinction. It is not our intention to criticise Goethe 
as a writer of plays, or his plays as mere literary 
productions, or what are called closet dramas ; but to 
consider him strictly as a playwright, and his plays as 
productions intended for representation on the stage. 
The dramatic value of a play is its effectiveness upon 
the stage. Whatever other merits a play may have, 
psychological, philosophical, or ethical, if it is not 
effective upon the stage, it lacks the first essential of 
a good drama. A psychological, philosophical, or ethi- 
cal discussion may be cast in the form of dialogue, or 
even of a drama ; as, for example, the Dialogues of 
Plato, but these are not dramas in the proper sense. 
In order to arrive at clearness in this matter, we 
must first inquire what kind of effectiveness we have 
a right to expect from the drama, and, secondly, 
through what technical methods this effectiveness 
may be best attained. Of course we must not expect 
from the drama every kind of effectiveness, as, for 
instance, the effect of a philosophical argument, ser- 
mon, or oratorio; we must not look for the effect 
produced by an intoxicating draught as Magara.. 

First, then, let us consider what constitutes dra- 
matic effectiveness. The question might be answered 
by one word, viz. the term " drama," which properly 
means action, so that a drama without action is a 
contradiction in terms. The essential element, then, 
in dramatic effectiveness is action. It must, however, 
be action of a peculiar kind, — in a word, it must 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 191 



be motivated action, and the motive must at once be 
rational and apparent to the spectators. This Goe- 
the himself believed, and has admirably expressed 
in words put into the mouth of Wilhelm Meister 
with regard to Shakespeare's characters : " These 
very mysterious and composite creatures of nature 
act before us in his plays, as if they were clocks with 
cases and dial-plates of crystal ; they show in their 
determination the lapse of the hours, and at the 
same time we can recognize the wheels and springs 
that drive tftem." 

The drama, then, in its true sense, is an action, a 
rounded and complete action, whose various parts 
or moments are evolved and connected by intelligible 
motives. 

These motives may have two sources, that is, they 
may be either in the characters or in the exigencies 
of the action itself. For example, the fortunate ter- 
mination of " Iphigenie " finds its motive in the per- 
fect sincerity of Iphigenie's character. In " Egmont " 
also, as well as in " Gotz," the hero's fate is plainly 
due to defects in his own character. On the other 
hand, the task imposed upon Hanllet of putting his 
uncle to death plainly arises from the exigency of 
circumstances, — the moral demands of his time, — 
and can in no wise be laid to the charge of Hamlet's 
character. It may here be remarked, that the ancient 
differs from the modern drama, in the source from 
which it mainly draws its motives. The ancient 
dramatists looked for their motives chiefly in the 



192 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

exigences of circumstances, which to them were sy- 
nonymous with necessity, destiny, or Fate, whence the 
majority of ancient plays are Fate-dramas. Modern 
dramatists, on the other hand, — and pre-eminently 
Goethe, — seek their motives chiefly in character, 
whence most good modern plays are, to a very large 
extent, character-dramas. This difference accounts, 
in some measure, for the superior effectiveness of the 
ancient drama, inasmuch as motives originating in 
external circumstances are far more easy to represent 
than those drawn from character. Probably the 
highest type of drama is that in which the motives 
are drawn equally from circumstances (not necessa- 
rily conceived as Fate) and from character. This bal- 
ance of motives we find in Shakespeare's best plays, 
for example, " Hamlet " and " Romeo and Juliet." In 
a word, we may say that the prime and fundamental 
condition of dramatic effect, as such, is perfect mo- 
tivation. A series of brilliant scenes, however 
effective otherwise, are not dramatic. In this the 
drama differs from history, that in the former the 
events are connected by perfect motivation; in 
the latter, merely by time and imperfect, often non- 
apparent motivation. 

Although motivation is the first essential of dra- 
matic effect, it is not, by itself alone, sufficient to in- 
sure that effect. Other and secondary conditions are 
requisite. In the first place, the motives must be of 
a particular kind, since all motives are not dramatic 
motives. True dramatic motives are such as an au- 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



193 



dience feel to be human and rational, — such as men 
like themselves in similar circumstances would act 
upon. Consequently, all motives that affect only ec- 
centric or exceptionally good or wicked characters, 
must be used sparingly, if at all. The same is true of 
all motives of a miraculous, revolting, or fantastic kind. 
What is regarded as miraculous, revolting, or fantastic, 
is not the same in all ages or among all peoples ; for 
which reason every dramatist must keep very stead- 
ily in view his own time and public. For example, 
some things that the Greeks forbade to be represented 
on the stage as revolting, such as assassination, mur- 
der, and suicide, we permit, and applaud. The stab- 
bing of Caesar, the suicide of Brutus, the death of 
Romeo and Juliet, of Gretchen, etc., are examples of 
this. 

In the second place, dramatic motives, in order to 
be effective, must produce certain results. 

(1) They must produce passion and action, and not 
merely dialogue, however philosophical, beautiful, or 
moral it may be. 

(2) The motivated action must be so arranged and 
rounded as to arouse a steadily increasing sympathy, 
expectation, and anxiety — or, as Aristotle puts it, 
pity and fear — on the part of the audience, and then 
to satisfy these emotions. 

(3) The ultimate result of the whole action must 
be to solemnize the mind by revealing to it the work- 
ings of the human heart and the moral order of the 
universe, and to send an audience forth refreshed, 

13 



194 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



strengthened, and inspired for the duties of life, — 
in a word, it must result in what Aristotle calls 

Purification. 

Having thus stated, in general terms, the true ar- 
tistic effect of the drama, we come next to consider 
by what technical methods these results are to be 
obtained. Inasmuch as the first. condition of artistic 
effectiveness in the drama is complete and thorough 
motivation, our first inquiry must relate to the mode 
in which this may be reached. It is evident that 
this will in large measure depend upon the 'choice of 
subject, the fact being that it is much easier to find 
motives for certain lines of action than for others. 
Indeed, however this choice may be influenced by 
fashion or by the intellectual and aesthetic idiosyncra- 
sies of the author, the subject must always be one 
capable of being transformed into a dramatic idea, — 
that unital and initial germ from which the whole 
drama is developed. There is hardly any point in 
which the genius of an artist is more apparent, than 
in this ability to see what subjects are capable of be- 
ing permeated with the living, causative, formative 
dramatic idea. 

And this is especially true of the dramatist. The 
question of what is really dramatic has been much 
agitated, but one may affirm that dramatic, and more 
especially tragic subjects, are those containing the 
elements of some great moral collision, taking place 
in a sphere of life in which the characters must be 
supposed capable of expressing this collision in speech 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT, 



195 



and action. This collision itself must be of a kind 
to give ample opportunity for the display of passion 
and action. This regulation effectively excludes all 
subjects containing collisions which are fought out 
within the breast of the individual, or in philosophical 
and moral discussion with others. Moral collisions 
that lead to no outward action, but only to mono- 
logues or conversations, are essentially undramatic. 
It would follow, of course, that a subject could not 
be chosen from among a people of a low degree of 
culture, or a people whose lives are not dramatic. 
Granting now that the subject is properly chosen, the 
conditions specified being fulfilled, the question arises 
how the subject is to be developed so as to produce 
these dramatic effects, we have mentioned above; 
viz. (1.) abundant display of action and passion in 
the character ; (2.) the excitement of a steadily in- 
creasing sympathy on the part of the audience, and 
the satisfaction of the same ; (3.) the moral inspira- 
tion and physical refreshment that come from the 
clear presentation and solution of moral problems. 
To exhaust this question is not easy, and, in a brief 
lecture like this, only the more prominent means for 
producing effectiveness can even be mentioned. 

In the first place, then, care must be taken to con- 
centrate interest, and this can be done only by pre- 
serving the unity of action, which action must not be 
understood to mean a single event, but a connected se- 
ries of events, or, as Aristotle says, a praxis. In every 
drama the action must be strictly one, — undivided. It 



196 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



must then revolve about a single character, or a single 
group of characters, involved in the conception of the 
subject. What is true of the drama is true of every 
other art. A picture, for example, must have a sin- 
gle point of interest, about which everything else is 
grouped. It follows from this, that those accessory 
characters and groups which are necessary to the de- 
velopment of the plot, and as foils to the principal 
characters, must be subordinated, and not receive 
any prominence beyond what they derive from their 
relation to these characters. Any attempt to give 
them prominence on their own account would only 
distract attention, scatter interest, dilute sympathy, 
cause confusion, and diminish effectiveness. 

We must here note that the unity of the actions 
so essential to the effectiveness of a drama, does not 
depend solely upon the unity or oneness of the char- 
acters, or central group. Actions belonging even to a 
single character do not necessarily form a dramatic 
unity. A drama is never a biography, nor a series of 
adventures or episodes. In other words, a mere his- 
toric or personal connection between events is utterly 
different from that relation which produces dramatic 
unity. A dramatic action, therefore, is one which not 
only has its centre in a single character, but must be 
a single action in the sense that all its parts are con- 
nected as cause and effect, and every event must tend 
to advance or relieve the progress of the action. And 
not only so, but the action must have a natural begin- 
ning in a deed or juncture forming the collision of the 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



197 



piece ; and an ending, in which the problem involved 
in the collision is naturally solved. Naturally solved, 
I repeat, because there are unnatural solutions, and 
these are essentially uudramatic. A natural solution 
is one whose elements are found in the action and 
characters of the piece itself. An unnatural solution 
is one violently introduced from without, in the 
shape of miracle, chance, or some catastrophe of 
nature. Each of these is a Deus ex machina, or, as 
the Italians say, a salto mortale, which is forever 
interdicted in art as nullifying its true purpose. 
Other unities have, at certain times, been insisted 
upon, especially those of time and place ; but these 
are unessential, and have almost universally been 
discarded. 

In the second place, it is not only necessary to con- 
centrate and sustain interest, but to arouse it properly. 
And this can be done only by putting the audience 
in possession of facts sufficient to enable them to un- 
derstand the nature of the collision involved, and the 
relation of the different characters to it. This Aris- 
totle happily calls the Seen?, or tying of the knot. 
This must be done in the opening scenes of a play, 
which in a certain sense must always be introductory. 
Any attempt to put the audience in possession of the 
necessary facts by means of a prologue, — though 
favored and practised by some dramatists, such as 
Euripides, Seneca, and Alfieri, — is inartistic, and be- 
speaks incapacity on the part of the dramatist. A 
prologue hardly becomes more artistic even when it 



198 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



takes the form of a mere explanatory dialogue, in 
no way advancing the action of the play. The open- 
ing of a piece which puts the audience in possession 
of the necessary facts will, by a good artist, be so 
arranged as to be brief, and a part of the action of the 
play, for only in this w 7 ay can it arouse the highest 
interest. 

In the third place, the interest, once aroused, must 
be steadily sustained ; which means, not that it must 
be kept uniformly at the same degree of intensity, 
but that it must gradually increase until it reaches 
its climax and satisfaction in the solution of the 
piece. In a word, we may say that the interest 
must be compound interest. At the same time, care 
must be taken to retard the interest until the climax 
can be fairly reached. This is perhaps the most dif- 
ficult task imposed upon the playwright, inasmuch 
as it involves a profound knowledge of psychology 
and an immense power of grading and directing all 
the parts of his play to a single end. With this in 
view he must carefully avoid introducing anything, 
however tempting, not bearing directly upon the 
action of the play, and also the placing of less inter- 
esting scenes after more interesting ones ; or in any 
way introducing mere explanatory matter without 
action. For this reason, long messages interrupting 
the action of the play, and similar things, should be 
avoided. A play in which scenes can be omitted 
or transposed, without affecting the interest of the 
piece, is by that fact alone a poor play, and argues an 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



199 



inferior playwright. Perhaps the worst of all possible 
plays is one consisting of a series of scenes in which 
the action does not advance, or the characters are not 
brought into any different relation to each other at 
the end from that which they occupied at the begin- 
ning. Such plays are the "Hecuba" of Euripides, 
and the " Brunhilde," written some years ago for the 
actress Janauschek. 

In the fourth place, the interest, having been 
aroused and sustained throughout the play, must in 
the end secure complete satisfaction. Such satis- 
faction we are wont to call poetic justice. By this 
we mean that every one of the principal characters 
must at the conclusion of the piece meet with the just 
reward of his deeds ; thus impressing that most pro- 
found of all moral truths, often so dimly visible in 
our actual lives, namely, that there is an inexorable 
moral law ruling in the world, and giving to each man 
the exact reward of his deeds. Only in this w T ay can 
a play produce that exhilaration and moral inspira- 
tion which are the ultimate tests of the value of a 
drama. But although a play, like every true work 
of art, ought to produce a moral effect, the artist's 
intention to produce this effect should never be appar- 
ent. In other words, a drama ought not, either in 
whole or in part, to be a sermon or moral lecture. 

The moral effect, on the contrary, ought to be ap- 
parent in the very construction and action of the 
play, and to be deduced therefrom by a spontaneous 
action under the influence of emotion on the part of 



200 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the audience. We ought no more to look for a ser- 
mon in a play, than we do in the Venus of Melos or 
the Hermes of Praxiteles. True works of art, like 
lofty characters, exercise their influence, not through 
what they do or say, but through what they are. As 
Schiller puts it, " There is nobility even in the moral 
world. Common natures pay with what they do, — 
noble natures with what they are." 

Such then are some of the principal and essential 
conditions of dramatic effectiveness : (1) choice of sub- 
ject, noble and capable of being developed and mo- 
tivated into scenes of action and passion, — in other 
words, into a dramatic unity ; (2) absolute unity and 
probability of action ; (3) interest artistically enlisted, 
sustained, and satisfied, at last, by poetic justice. In 
order to deal with Goethe as upright judges, and not 
arbitrarily as tyrants, we have now only to apply 
the principles laid down, in all their rigor, to his dra- 
matic productions, — or, at least, to such of them as 
may be supposed in any way to determine his position 
as a playwright. 

In doing so, we shall deal mainly with those plays 
which may be regarded as marking stages in his 
dramatic development, — " Gotz von Berlichingen " 
" Egmont," " Torquato Tasso," " Iphigenie," and 
" Faust." Although Goethe had previously written 
some smaller pieces for special occasions, his career 
as a serious playwright begins with " Gotz von Ber- 
lichingen." This play, of which the first draft was 
written in six weeks, in the year 1771, was con- 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



201 



ceived under the influence of a powerful enthusiasm 
due to the reading of Shakespeare. With respect to 
the effect of this first acquaintance with the work of 
the English dramatist, Goethe himself says, speaking 
through the lips of Wilhelm Meister : — 

" I cannot recollect that any book, any man, any inci- 
dent of my life, has produced such effects on me 

They seem as if they were performances of some celestial 
Genius, descending among men to make them, by the 
mildest instructions, acquainted with themselves. They 
are no fictions ! you would think, while readiog them, 
you stood before the unclosed awful books of Fate, while 
the whirlwind of most impassioned life was howling 
through the leaves, and tossing them fiercely to and fro. 
The strength and tenderness, the power and peacefulness 
of this man, have so astonished and transported me, that 
I long vehemently for the time when I shall have it in 
my power to read further." 

It was in this frame of mind that Goethe wrote 
" Gotz," drawing his theme from the autobiography 
of the old national hero of the Iron Hand, a theme 
capable of being treated in the manner of Shake- 
speare. He wrote under the influence of an imita- 
tive enthusiasm, and not in accordance with any 
theory of dramatic art. Indeed, at that time he had 
not arrived at any such theory. This fact accounts 
in great measure for the merits and the defects of the 
work. The defects are very great ; but it has real 
merits, and, indeed, from a purely dramatic point 
of view, this piece, though the earliest, is unques- 



202 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



tionably the most popular and effective of Goethe's 
plays. 

Nor is this fact difficult to explain. Shakespeare's 
influence upon Goethe had been of a most healthy 
and stimulating kind. It had roused the spontaneity 
of his genius, which was naturally great, and supplied 
him with admirable models, without subjecting him 
to any aesthetic rules or theories. And this last neg- 
ative advantage was perhaps as valuable as the other 
two positive ones. For so strong in all Germans is 
the tendency to work according to rules addressed 
to the understanding, — and so fatal is this tendency 
to all German artists, even those of high genius, — 
that Goethe could hardly have failed to be injured 
in his work by any such restrictions. 

This indeed, we shall see, actually took place with 
much damage to Goethe's dramatic work, after he 
became interested in dramatic theory. Not only will 
theory never make an artist, but it may even damage 
one, especially if he be a German. 

■ ■ Gotz von Berlichingen," in spite of its popularity 
and its extraordinary value in the history of German 
literature, will not stand the test of vigorous dra- 
matic criticism. The subject, indeed, is well chosen, 
being one in which the unity of action might easily 
have been preserved, strict motivation introduced, 
and abundant opportunities offered for scenes of 
action and passion. 

But unfortunately Goethe was unable to permeate 
this subject with a dramatic idea, and hence the 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



203 



work remains a series of interesting but disconnected 
scenes, which do not form in any sense a dramatic 
unity. The interest is scattered and broken into 
fragments, with neither proper gradation, climax, nor 
satisfactory solution. Much crude historical matter, 
connected, as historical matter usually is, by mere 
chronological succession, instead of dramatic motiva- 
tion,. remains to burden the play. The result is, that 
the catastrophe does not follow necessarily from the 
conditions of the piece, and leaves the demands of 
poetic justice unsatisfied. Gotz, it is true, is a tragic 
character, and this for twc reasons. The former of 
these is his thoughtless, incautious, and fond con- 
fidence in Weislingen, a man who had abundantly 
proved himself fit for a place in the lowest circle of 
Dante's Inferno. The latter was his failure to see 
that his efforts were directed against the natural ad- 
vance of civilization, and in favor of an obsolete 
feudalism. At the same time, these defects are not 
sufficient to reconcile us to the hero's dying as a 
coward might, with a feeling that his whole heroic 
life had been worse than vain. This inartistic end- 
ing is the more to be regretted, inasmuch as it 
might easily have been avoided. The fault is due in 
part to Goethe's following too closely the facts of 
history,, in defiance of the aesthetic law which de- 
mands poetic justice ; that is, a recognition of a man's 
virtues as well as of his defects. But it was due 
perhaps even more to the circumstance, that, w 7 hen 
Gotz was written, the author was in revolt against 



204 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

the German political system, just as Schiller was in 
revolt against the social system when he wrote " The 
Bobbers," and wished to excite popular indignation 
against that system by making Gotz appear as a 
martyr to it. This purpose to excite indignation 
must be set down as inartistic, as all tendentious 
purpose in art is. 

In spite of all these great defects, the play has a 
certain amount of confused effectiveness, both in the 
action, and in the characters. Notwithstanding 
Gotz's lamentable ending, he and his little group of 
associates remain inspiring characters ; and this is so 
true, that the play has always, perhaps more than any 
other of Goethe's works, been a favorite upon the 
stage. This is certainly only in a small degree due 
to its artistic merits, since the interest which it ex- 
cites is not, strictly speaking, a dramatic interest; 
nevertheless, the general tone of the play is so healthy, 
and its action so full of varied life, that the ultimate 
effect is in a large degree inspiring and exhilarating. 
As early as 1799, the drama of "Gotz von Berlich- 
ingen" was thought worthy of a translation into 
English by so great an artist as Sir Walter Scott. 
It ought perhaps to be remarked that Goethe wrote 
three, if not four, editions of " Gotz/' and that only 
the third was really intended for the stage. 

" Gotz von Berlichingen " can claim two great mer- 
its. It was the first truly national German play, and 
it was also the play in which was first fully realized 
what Lessing and others had so earnestly striven for 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 205 



without completely achieving, — a breach with tradi- 
tional rules, and the complete liberation of the German 
stage from the artificial and conventional drama of 
France, which had so baneful an influence on the lit- 
erature and morals of Germany. The work has thus 
the merit of marking a most important epoch in 
German literature. 

There must have been considerable outcry on the 
part of the critics against this departure from dramatic 
rules and precepts, 1 and this must have come, in part 
at least, from critics whom Goethe felt bound to re- 
spect ; for we find him writing to his friend Kestner : 
"I am now engaged upon a drama for the boards, 
in order that the fellows may see that, if I please, I 
can observe rules and portray morality and sentimen- 
tality." To what drama Goethe here refers we can- 
not say with certainty. It may have been " Faust," 
the idea of which was fermenting in his mind at this 
time. Be this as it may, the first draft of " Faust " 
which, in the main, was written shortly after " Gdtz," 
though not published till many years later (1790), 
corresponds accurately with Goethe's description, inas- 
much as it follows dramatic rules perhaps more than 
his other dramas, and deals with morality and senti- 
mentality. And although "Faust," as a completed 
work, did not appear till sixty years later, we may 
here insert what has to be said concerning its dra- 
matic properties. Paradoxical as it may seem, 
" Faust " is a drama to which the standard of dra- 

1 See the scoff of Frederic the Great, cited on page 158. 



206 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

matic criticism should not be applied, if we do not 
wish to make it appear a failure, as, indeed, Vischer 
and other eminent critics have shown it to be. In- 
deed, as a whole, it does not belong to the class of 
acting plays, but to that of literary and philosophical 
dramas. The dramatic idea in itself, though well and 
profoundly chosen, is far too vast for a single drama, 
and almost even for a trilogy. Moreover, many of 
the scenes are almost incapable of being presented 
on the stage, such as the two Walpurgisnachte and 
the Prologues. It is true that the whole is now an- 
nually played at Weimar, but under circumstances 
altogether exceptional, and such as are hardly possi- 
ble on any ordinary stage. Moreover, the dramatic 
unity is frequently violated, the scenes being often 
bound together, not by dramatic motivation, but by 
the personal identity of Faust. In fact, it is largely 
a series of episodes in the life of an individual, Faust ; 
and according to Aristotle, the episodic drama is the 
worst of all. The only part that lies within the 
sphere of strictly dramatic criticism is the original 
fragment, published in 1790, founded on popular le- 
gend and embodying Faust's relation to Gretchen. 
This part will stand the severest dramatic criticism. 
The subject is well chosen, and capable of being thor- 
oughly permeated by the dramatic idea. It also 
affords excellent motives for scenes of action and pas- 
sion. It rises naturally to a climax, and descends as 
naturally to the catastrophe, which satisfies all the 
claims of poetic justice. The interest is sustained 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



207 



throughout, and the final effect is, in the highest de- 
gree, solemnizing and purifying. It cannot be other- 
wise than a matter of regret that Goethe did not 
complete his " Faust " in accordance with his original 
conception ; for the additions which, after his meta- 
physical and critical studies, he made even to the 
first part, not to speak of the second, essentially in- 
jured the unity of the action, and considerably im- 
paired its effectiveness for the stage. 

The other three plays of Goethe which we purpose 
to criticise as typical productions are "Egmont," 
" Iphigenie," and " Tasso." These dramas were writ- 
ten nearly at the same time, — between 1777 and 
1789, when Goethe was in the full possession of his 
powers. They may therefore be considered his high- 
est dramatic efforts. First came " Egmont," 1777 to 
1785. The subject is an event in the rebellion of 
the Netherlands against Spanish domination, and 
therefore may be considered a Tutiional subject. In- 
deed, it is said that the play was intended as a com- 
panion to " Gotz." Here, for the first time, we see 
the baneful effects of Goethe's attempt to apply dra- 
matic rules in a comprehensive way, and the result 
as a whole is a mechanical production, devoid of 
dramatic unity. 

This criticism may appear unjust, especially as the 
play has held the stage for so many years, and pos- 
sesses a certain effectiveness. But, after all, this ef- 
fectiveness is not truly dramatic, being due, in great 
part, to a few graceful love scenes scattered through 



208 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

it, and in some degree also to a certain historic and 
political interest, which has no artistic bearing. The 
chief effectiveness is derived, not from the dramatic 
idea, which is political, but from a series of domestic 
scenes utterly foreign to his idea. For the funda- 
mental idea, or collision, is this : A nobleman finds 
himself placed between duty to his conquered and 
rebelling countrymen, and fealty to their conqueror, 
under whom he has accepted service. Being of a 
generous, brave, tender, reckless, and unreflective 
character, fond of pleasure and popularity, he coun- 
tenances his countrymen in their seditious practices, 
thereby giving offence to the conquerors, from whom, 
nevertheless, he has not sufficient patriotism or fore- 
sight, as Orange had, to disconnect himself. 

This tragic weakness brings about his destruction. 
To such a political idea, the domestic scenes between 
Egmont and Clarchen are plainly alien, and, as a 
matter of fact, they have no bearing upon the action 
of the play, and in no way tend to relieve or develop 
it. Indeed, the only case when she in any way en- 
ters into the main action of the drama is after the 
catastrophe is certain, when her ghost appears as a 
Deus ex machina in the garb of Freedom, from a 
supernatural world, whose introduction is not justi- 
fied by the plan of the play. It is a rule of dramatic 
art, that the miraculous and supernatural should not 
be introduced into a play unless they have been sug- 
gested as credible agents early in the plot, as* they are 
in the case of the witches in " Macbeth," the ghost 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



209 



in " Hamlet," and others. Indeed, the introduction 
of Clarchen in the winding up of " Egmont " is 
inartistic, being unmotivated, and, as Schiller said, 
operatic. 

Beside the weakness of the termination, the play 
has other glaring defects. Many of the scenes are too 
prolix, and so loosely connected that they not only 
could be, but actually are, transposed when the play 
is represented ; which shows that the interest is not 
properly graded. A number of the scenes consist of 
mere padding of talk: indeed, Goethe might, with- 
out impropriety, have called those scenes, in which 
the citizens so fortuitously meet to gossip, the 
choric part, and assigned to his play a chorus of 
Netherlander. There is no binding and loosing in 
the play, and of course no Peripeteia. On the w T hole, 
then, in spite of its popularity, from the standard of 
just dramatic criticism the play must be regarded as 
a failure* 

In passing from " Egmont " to " Iphigenie," we 
suddenly enter a new world. " Iphigenie " is almost 
in every respect a complete contrast to the play we 
have just considered. Here Goethe was dealing with 
a subject which had already been dramatized by 
two great playwrights, Euripides and Eacine. 

The main incidents of the play, therefore, were 
already given in the title, " Iphigenie in Tauris," and 
a new motivation alone remained to be supplied. 
This, it must be admitted, Goethe has accomplished 
with admirable taste and success. In fact, the mo- 

14 



210 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



tivation is so entirely his own, that he has given us 
one of the best of character-dramas, instead of a fate- 
drama. The dramatic unity is preserved through- 
out : the tying and untying of the knot, although 
classically simple, are managed in a masterly way. 
Strangely enough, although the characters are in 
large measure foils to each other, they are all noble 
and dignified. The character of Iphigenie, combin- 
ing princess and priestess, is perhaps the purest 
and stateliest that Goethe or any dramatist ever con- 
ceived. One lingers before it with ever-increasing 
delight, as he does before the Venus of Melos, or 
the Immaculate Conception of Murillo. One espe- 
cial feature of the "Iphigenie" is the limpid flow 
of its stately language, which has, perhaps, never 
been excelled. To use the words of Keats, it reads 
like the large utterance of the early gods. 

Though entirely modern and un-Greek in tone and 
sentiment, in form it is as perfect and self-contained 
as the Parthenon of Iktinos ; and, like the Parthenon, 
its effect is calculated for an audience of highly de- 
veloped taste. The play contains little external action 
or violent expression of passion to attract a popular 
audience. Its strength lies mainly in its psychologi- 
cal truthfulness, which in the hands of highly culti- 
vated actors can be made very impressive. Although 
exception might be taken to a few features of the 
play, such as the Euripidean prologue, and the some- 
what too epigrammatic and philosophical character 
of the dialogue, " Iphigenie " must be regarded as the 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 211 



most finished of Goethe's dramatic efforts ; and this 
is clearly shown by its ultimate effect, which leaves 
the mind in the attitude of solemnity, purity, and 
lofty courage. 

From " Iphigenie " we pass to the last of Goethe's 
typical plays, " Torquato Tasso," finished in 1789. 
In the choice and development of this subject, Goethe 
had to depend upon his own resources ; and, when 
we compare the play with " Iphigenie," we see at 
once how much he owed in the latter to his Greek 
predecessor, especially in the matter of incident. 
" Tasso " is almost purely a character-drama, and is 
well motivated from beginning to end. Nevertheless, 
the result in the two cases is very different. What in 
" Iphigenie " was pure, living classical stateliness, has 
here become rigidity, coldness, formality. Instead 
of a Parthenon of lucent Pentelic marble, we now 
enter the ice palace of a Eussian autocrat. The car- 
dinal defects of this play are largely due to a false 
choice of subject, which does not lend itself to dra- 
matic development. An almost sure test of a good 
play is that its dramatic idea, or collision, can be fully 
stated in a few words. " Macbeth," " Hamlet," 
" Iphigenie," may be cited as examples of this. 

In "Tasso" on the contrary, it is extremely diffi- 
cult to state, even in a prolix way, the dramatic idea. 
The truth is, Goethe took an incident from the life 
of an historic character, and was unable to lift it out 
of its historic wording into the refinement of a living 
dramatic idea. A plebeian poet of passionate tern- 



212 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



peranient finds patronage and high favor at the court 
of a powerful prince. In the moment of his highest 
triumph, he is brought face to face with another fa- 
vorite of the court, — a nobleman of practical and 
diplomatic turn of mind. In the conflict which 
follows between the two natures, the one-sidedness 
of each is brought out. A dispute arises, which has 
to be settled by the prince according to a purely 
conventional and unjust standard; bringing disgrace 
upon the poet, who was really blameless, and acquit- 
ting the culpable nobleman. Partly under the in- 
fluence of the prince, the nobleman is induced to 
admit his wrong, and sue for reconciliation, which he 
ultimately effects, and draws from the poet an enthu- 
siastic acknowledgment of his superiority. This story, 
though long, does not really state the entire plot of 
the play, for it does not include the very important 
roles played by the two heroines. But this fact only 
bears out the statement that the idea is undramatic. 
And indeed these rdles are almost unrelated to the 
main collision, — so much so that at the end the rela- 
tion between Tasso and the Princess is left entirely 
unsolved. The same inferior and fragmentary art 
to which we called attention in " Egmont " reappears 
here. The effectiveness of the play when represented 
is due in large measure to a few delicately constructed 
and tender love scenes, which have no real relation to 
the dramatic idea. In the arts of the playwright and 
the novelist, love scenes are too frequently the refuge 
of the destitute. 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 



213 



They are the refuge of the destitute, because they 
are sure to interest a large puW^j^haxgLXter the char- 
acter of the work may be in wnTch they appear. In 
introducing such scenes Goethe shows that he was a 
true German himself, and knew the character of his 
countrymen. In a similar manner, a French painter 
who cannot attract attention by legitimate means 
will frequently resort to the introduction of nude 
figures, sure that under any circumstances this will 
appeal to something in his countrymen, if not to 
their artistic sense. To sum up the dramatic charac- 
teristics of the play, we must say that, although con- 
forming in many ways to the rules of art, as a 
drama it is a distinct failure, and was so consid- 
ered even by Goethe's contemporaries ; and at the 
present day the play has almost disappeared from 
the stage. 

This ends our consideration of the acknowledged 
typical dramas of Goethe. If time permitted, other 
minor dramas might have been considered with 
interest, but the general result would not thereby be 
materially affected. "What, then, we may ask, is that 
result ? Is it such as to justify us in affirming that 
Goethe was a great playwright ? Without detracting 
from Goethe's greatness in other directions, and in- 
deed heartily acknowledging it, we must, in accord- 
ance with the verdict of rational criticism, answer 
the question in the negative. And in order to jus- 
tify this answer, we have only to generalize what we 
have already stated in particular. Goethe's short- 



214 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



comings as a playwright may be said to be four in 
number : — 

1. A fundamental lack of the dramatic sense, — 
which in great measure prevented him from recogniz- 
ing what subjects were capable of being transformed 
into dramatic ideas, and so becoming dramatically 
effective. 

2. A fundamental lack of constructive power,— 
which prevented him from producing w 7 orks distin- 
guished by organic unity; thus leaving his dramas, 
either a series of almost disconnected scenes, like 
"Gotz" and "Egmont," with an operatic termination 
like the latter, or united only by an abstract notion, 
not arising out of the dramatic idea, but essential to 
it, as in " Tasso " and in " Faust/' 

3. The lack of passionate expression and vigorous 
action, leading him to dwell upon descriptions of 
characters and scenes, rather than upon living ac- 
tions and stirring events. 

4. His inability to deal with the legitimate rules 
of dramatic art, — at one time leading him to set 
them aside altogether, at another time allowing him 
to be completely overmastered by them. 

Of these cardinal defects some may be attrib- 
uted to Goethe's nationality, while one, at least, 
namely, the lack of constructive power, must be 
ascribed to Goethe himself. As compared with the 
other leading nations of Europe, the Germans may 
be said to be an undramatic people, deficient in 
passionate expression, overflowing energy, and above 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT, 



215 



all in the keen dramatic sense of the ludicrous and 
incongruous, — which is the salt of active life and 
which is incompatible with their phlegmatic tempera- 
ment and extreme sentimentality. That these na- 
tional drawbacks were not necessarily fatal to a great 
dramatic genius, when relieved by a strong con- 
structive ability, was shown in the case of Schiller, 
and in a lower degree by Lessing and Iffland ; all of 
whom, though inferior to Goethe in other respects, 
are superior to him as playwrights. Goethe's failure 
as a playwright, therefore, was due in large measure 
to his lack of constructive power, — that is, of the 
ability to hold many things together and reduce 
them to a living organism permeated by a dramatic 
current. This defect appears not only in Goethe's 
dramatic books, but also in his works, — notably in 
" Meister," — and may account for his failure in the 
plastic and graphic arts. As a poet Goethe was 
essentially epic and lyric, but not dramatic. Ger- 
many owes him her best modern epic, namely, 
" Hermann and Dorothea," and a large number of the 
best lyrics in the language. And, in confirmation 
of this, it is a curious fact that Goethe's most 
perfect drama, " Iphigenie," is, like the Greek plays 
which he imitated, a combination of epic and lyric 
elements. 

If we were to look into the facts and habits of 
Goethe's life for an explanation of his failure as a 
playwright, we might perhaps find it in three things : 
(1) his tendency to allow a long interval to elapse 



216 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



between his first conception of a piece and its execu- 
tion and completion, Jiis views respecting life and 
art changing materially in the mean while ; (2) his 
exceptional good fortune, which left him untouched 
by many forms of human experience ; (3) his ever- 
increasing withdrawal from the world of human 
strife and suffering, which is pre-eminently the dra- 
matic world. The first of these facts accounts for 
much that is fragmentary and inorganic in " Faust," 
while the second furnishes a sufficient reason for 
Goethe's inferiority as a playwright to the poor, 
much-tried Schiller, who during the most of his brief 
life was deep in the world's hardships and sufferings. 
It remains forever true, that " we learn in suffering 
what we teach in song." 

But if, in a technical sense, we cannot speak highly 
of Goethe as a playwright, we must not fail to ac- 
knowledge his other great merits in connection with 
the drama, and his abundant efforts to raise it from 
coarseness, conventionality, and thraldom to French 
ideas, and to make it an integral part of the national 
literature of Germany. 

By his long-continued personal efforts in connec- 
tion with the stage at Weimar, he raised the standard 
of acting in Germany, and by his admirable and 
sympathetic criticisms he elevated the standard of 
dramatic taste ; and last, but not least, by introducing 
Shakespeare to the notice of his countrymen, he 
gave a lasting impulse for good to German literary 
effort and life. 



GOETHE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. 217 



Besides all these great merits, his failure as a play- 
wright — insist upon it as we may and as we have a 
right to do — seems but a spot on the face of the 
sun, which we mention oftener in order to excuse 
something in ourselves, than to detract from the 
life-giving fulness of that luminary. 



218 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



VIII. 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 

By Mrs. E. D. CHENEY. 

Alles Vergangliche 
1st nnr eiu Gleichniss ; 
Das Unzulangliche 
Hier wird's Ereigniss ; 
Das TJnbeschreibliche 
Hier ist es gethan, 
Das Ewig-Weibliclie 
Zieht uns hinan. 1 

Faust, close of the Second Part. 

These words are the ripened fruit of the whole 
study, thought, love, and life of the greatest poet and 



1 Translations: — 

All that is changeable 

Is but a fable : 
Lo, the intangible 

Reached here and stable ! 
More than we humanly 

Dreamed, here is done, 
While the Aye Womanly 

Wafteth us on. 

J. S. Dwight. 



All that doth pass away 

Is but a fable ; 
All that eludes is made 

Here true and stable. 



The Indescribable 
Here it is done, 

The Ever Womanly 
Beckons us on. 



All things transitory 

But as symbols are sent ; 
Earth's insufficiency 

Here grows to event. 
The Indescribable 

Here it is done, — 
The Woman-Soul leadeth us 

Upward and on ! 

Bayard Taylor. 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



219 



thinker of our century; of one who did not alone 
receive and repeat traditions of the past, — deeply as 
he studied their meaning, — but who fully accepted 
the scientific method of investigation, and dared to 
confront every question that suggested itself to his 
mind. They are not the expression of youthful fancy, 
nor the impulse of early passion. We may almost 
say they are the last important utterance of his mind, 
the climax of all his thought, all his experience. 
They are the final summing up in his thought of 
human life. Sin is forgiven, the meaning of this 
world's experience as symbol of eternity is declared, 
all that the human heart has longed for is promised, 
and the whole closes with the words that seem to 
include everything, — 

" Das Ewig-Weibliche 
ZieM uns hinan." 

What a promise of continued life and fresh creation 
is there in these words ! what abounding love, what 
infinite hope ! They are the closing words of the 
great drama of " Faust." 

Faust was the burden of Goethe's life, — a task 
long delayed, but never relinquished ; and in the 
final Chorus into which the whole grand symphony is 
resolved, as the simple Hymn of Joy concludes Beet- 
hoven's glorious Ninth, occurs a noble fugue, and the 
same thought is repeated in differing form, as Faust 
is released from his slavery to evil and welcomed into 
new life. As in the First Part of " Faust" the Chorus 
of Angels and of Women first awaken human love and 



220 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



sympathy, so in the Second they again minister to 
him ; and it is finally the same Margaret who asks to 
teach the soul escaping from sense and sin, 1 and it is 
the Mater Gloriosa who points out the path : 

' ' Komm hebe dich zu hohren Spharen ! 
Wenn er dich ahnet, folgt er nacli." 2 

And finally the Chorus Mysticus sums up the mean- 
ing of the drama in the pregnant lines : 

"Alles Vergangliche, 
1st nur ein Gleichniss ; 
Das Unzulangliche 
Hier wird's Ereigniss ; 
Das Unbeschreibliche 
Hier ist es gethan, 
Das Ewig-Weibliche 
Zieht uns hinan." 

Let us pause to note that Goethe gives to his ex- 
pression in this last verse the abstract form ; he uses 
the neuter article and noun, — Das Ewig- Weibliche. 
It is not the masculine or feminine personified. The 
whole drama has been drawing out the most abstract 
ideas into expression in its varied and motley groups, 
and in the previous verse, Doctor Marianus has 
raised the feminine personality to its very utmost 
expression, — Jungfrau (maiden), Mutter (mother), 
Konigin (queen), Gottin (goddess). But the mystic 

1 Vouchsafe to me that I instruct him: 
Still dazzles him the Day's new glare. 

2 Kise thou; to higher spheres conduct him, 
"Who, feeling thee, shall follow there. 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



221 



Chorus goes a step further, and carries the thought 
out of personalities again into the supreme abstract 
idea of womanhood. This seems intentional on the 
poet's part. Faust has learned at last the meaning 
of mortal life, the value of human relations, but this 
is not the end. What has glorified and blessed it all 
becomes now immortal and infinite : it is no single 
loved one, but the Eternally Womanly which is hence- 
forth to lead him upward and on. 

We are tempted to ask, Did Goethe know what a 
great sentence he had penned ? Did he mean all 
that can be extracted from this line ? Every great 
poetic word is a flower which folds up in itself and 
brings to ripeness precious seed innumerable, and 
capable of producing even fairer flowers and richer 
fruit, and this was a flower of genius, full of infinite, 
inexhaustible meaning. Goethe himself says of the 
Second Part of Faust : " If it contains many prob- 
lems, (inasmuch as, like the history of man, the last- 
solved problem ever produces a new one to solve,) it 
will nevertheless please those who understand by a 
gesture, a wink, a slight indication. They will find 
in it more than I could give." 

Doubtless this line sounded for years in Goethe's 
soul as a prophecy and inspiration, not as a rigid for- 
mula ; but that he spoke it with full sense of its deep 
meaning and truth is plain from the place which he 
has given it, and the relation it bears to all his 
thought. It is not an isolated statement. It is not 
the dramatic utterance of an individual mind, it is the 



222 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



word of the mystic chorus which sums up the whole 
drama of life. Goethe might have used the more gen- 
eral term ; he might have sung the Divine Humanity 
which is expressed in Christian thought. Why does 
he find his true expression in " Das Ewig-Weibliche " ? 
Why does he use this word, which implies difference 
of sex, and the eternally directing function of one 
aspect of the eternal thought, instead of employing a 
phrase that would express the whole ? 

Goethe's habitual thought was as far as possible 
from any Indian idea of reabsorption in Divinity and 
the loss of personality. He recognized that when a 
life was achieved, it became a living force, 1 although 
he questioned whether every apparent human life ac- 
complished this purpose. 2 It is not, therefore, from 
any thought of the extinction of personality as the 
final consummation of life is approached, that Goethe 
uses this abstract term, but to express the essential 
nature of the power which he thus invokes. It is 

1 In a letter to Zelter, Goethe says : " Let us continue our work 
until one of us, before or after the other, returns to ether at the 
summons of the World Spirit ! Then may the Eternal not refuse to 
us new activities, analogous to those wherein we have been tested! 
If He shall also add memory and a continued sense of the Eight 
and the Good, in his fatherly kindness, we shall then surely all the 
sooner take hold of the wheels which drive the cosmic machin- 
ery." — Bayard Taylor's notes, p. 532. 

2 He said to Eckermann : "I do not doubt our permanent ex- 
istence, for Nature cannot do without the entelechie. But we are 
not all immortal in the same fashion, and in order to manifest one's 
self in the future life as a great entelechie one must also become 
one." — Taylor, p. 516. 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



223 



not the feminine in its manifestation, but in its origi- 
nal character. 

In our effort to develop the meaning of this line, 
let us trace out, so far as brief limits will allow, 
Goethe's thought of Woman. In many an old mytho- 
logic story, Woman is the tempter, the embodiment 
of the material side of life, — that which prevents the 
soul from finding its true relation to the Divine. Can 
it be that this is the reversal of the truth ? that it is 
by the influence of the womanly that man alone can 
be saved from being cut off from the Eternal, the 
Universal, the Divine, — from the only damnation 
possible, the breaking of the bond which binds all 
together ? The light in which Woman is regarded is 
always significant of the philosophy and character of 
a people, and whether she is revered and honored as 
helper and sanctifier, or courted as a pleasure, or de- 
spised as an inferior, shows the quality of the soul. 
To man's feeling for Woman might well be applied 
Wordsworth's thoughtful lines: 

<c "Who feels contempt for any living thing 
Has faculties which he has never used, 
And thought with him is in its infancy." 

I find nowhere in Goethe's writings an expression 
of contempt for Woman as such. If there are any 
seeming exceptions, they are simply dramatic utter- 
ances, appropriate to the coarse or frivolous persons 
who utter them. But he does not shrink from as thor- 
ough analysis and as realistic treatment of women as 
of every other subject. He depicts women as he has 



224 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

seen and known them, studying them in all classes 
and conditions. We find the holy Saint, whose life 
is in rapt communion with God, — Mignon, who has 
wandered from some far-off land, an unbidden guest, 
and finds herself lost in this strange world, where 
even love fails her as a guide, — the stately Iphigenie, 
the practical Theresa, the commonplace Frau Melina, 
the unimpassioned Charlotte, — Lotte, the good sister, 
— the flippant Phillina, and Margaret, the child of 
Nature, — all are women, and he recognizes them as 
souls following out the law of their own natures, and 
influencing those with whom they are connected by 
force of character and will. They are not women 
alone, they are living wholes. He always recognizes 
the value of Woman's own life in relation with, but 
not simply as supplementary to, that of man. When 
he glorifies the household, it is not merely as a place 
for man to rest from past labors, and fit himself for 
new ones, but it is as the kingdom of the most pre- 
cious life, to which all other service should be subor- 
dinate ; — to rule here is to rule at the centre. That 
a woman's life should be fully wrought out from her 
own centre of being, is just as important as that a 
man's should be, — as is shown in Theresa, in Natalia, 
and in the whole tenor of his thought. 

How earnestly he sought to understand Woman's 
life from her own stand-point, and not as men look 
at it, is shown by his interest in "The Confessions of 
a Fair Saint," which is introduced, seemingly some- 
what irrelevantly, into his " Wilhelm Meister," though 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



225 



she is found to have deeply influenced the other char- 
acters. It is a genuine experience of a woman's soul, 
of which a mystical religious feeling has taken posses- 
sion, without driving out the natural thoughts and 
feelings of her sex. As such, he gives it without 
comment, as he might a scientific discovery. She is 
a striking instance of a most womanly woman find- 
ing ultimate satisfaction in spiritual life, without its 
full expression in human relations. 

In an early article of Goethe's, published in 1772, 
when he was but twenty-three years old, appears his 
thought of the profound influence of Woman. It is a 
notice of the poems of a Polish Jew, who seems to 
have been a young and fickle lover. He says : " 
Genius ! be it publicly known that neither shallow- 
ness nor weakness is the cause of his fickleness. Let 
him but find a maiden who is worthy of him." 
Goethe then describes the maiden full of charms and 
home graces : — 

" Should these two find each other, they at once divine 
what an embodiment of bliss each has secured in the 
other, and that they never can be parted. Then let him 
stammer — foreshadowing, hoping, enjoying — what none 
with words have ever spoken out, none with tears, none 
with the long lingering look and the soul in it. Truth 
and living beauty will then be in his songs, not the glit- 
tering baubles floating in so many German melodies." 

Lotte, in " The Sorrows of Werther," is one of those 
wonderful creations of genius whom you cannot ana- 
lyze more than a beloved child. Grimm says : — 

15 



226 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



" Up to the time of her appearance, Klopstock's Fanny 
had been the highest ideal of womanhood in Germany ; 
but Lotte at once won all hearts. After the appearance 
of Werther, young girls named Lotte refused to be called 
so any longer, feeling themselves unworthy to bear the 
name. . . . Lotte is the most simple and lovely German 
maiden, of whom nothing special is to be said. She en- 
joys dancing, she loves poetry, she can be enthusiastic; 
but she only needs to hear the slightest noise in the 
house, and she leaps down from the heavens into her 
wonted sphere, and is nothing but a housewife." 

How sanitary must have been the influence which 
made this the ideal of German girls ! 

In Goethe's own life the influence of Woman pre- 
dominates. His " Wahrheit und Dichtung aus mei- 
nem Leben, " the review of his own development, 
dwells upon his relations of love and friendship to 
various women, far more than upon matters of states- 
manship or learning. He was truly born of his 
mother's nature. Her traits are reproduced in him, 
w r hile from his rich, pedantic father came the formal- 
ity, the net- work of convention, the shell of worldly 
environment, which surrounded and obscured his life. 
Grimm says : " Goethe's father can be set aside : we 
do not need him to understand Goethe. But his 
mother is inseparable from him ; she forms a part of 
his being ; she understood him from the beginning, 
she divined him." Educated with his sister, a noble 
type of the intellectual woman, says Grimm, "he 
was from youth better acquainted with women than 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



227 



with men." But in spite, or more truly in conse- 
quence, of this strong influence from genuine women, 
Goethe was decidedly a masculine man. The femi- 
nine by its polarity developed the full force of his 
character. The calmness and self-poise, the absence 
of self-devotion in his nature, the joy in pursuit 
rather than fruitful delight in possession of the de- 
sired object, the centripetal force which made all 
things serve him, — intellectual traits which led to 
the false appearance of moral selfishness and coldness 
in affection, — mark this development of the masculine. 
But they never prevented him from recognizing the 
great truth of that relation whose leadings he steadily 
followed through all his life and thought, until he ex- 
pressed it in the immortal line, — 

" Das Ewig-Weibliche 
Zieht uns hinan." 

It is for the truth of relation that we come into 
mortal existence, — not to know ourselves, not to 
save ourselves, not to be ourselves except in rela- 
tion, — so that the individual is bound again to the 
universal. The relation of Man to Woman is typi- 
cal of this great law. As light and darkness show 
forth each other, so Man and Woman are fully re- 
vealed only in their relation to each other. Through- 
out the universe, only relation is creative. Goethe 
sees that not identity, but union in difference, is 
the attitude of Man and Woman. When Man and 
Woman see each other, they begin to apprehend the 
Universe. 



228 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



6 ' When I saw thee, all other things 

Appeared to me more bright ; 
I looked not on thee, but on them 

In thy reflected light ; 
Nor knew if it were they or thou 

That filled me with delight." 

Then each learns that its own self is not complete, 
can only be perfected by fitting itself to others, accept- 
ing the welfare of others as more its own than its 
own personality, — 

" When each the other loves, and loves himself no more." 

This is love and piety ; and the Masculine and Fem- 
inine, however embodied, do ever this service to each 
other. As a noble woman thus serves man, so says 
Dante, — 

" The like in lady doth a man of worth." 

Separation is the first step which makes creation, 
development, life, possible, — not one, but two. We 
must conceive of two before we can have relation, 
however we may still see that the two are one. How 
constantly this thought of relation runs through all 
Goethe's study and life 1 " Nothing is fair or good 
alone." It must be judged by all. Grimm says, 
" Goethe was persuaded that all phenomena stand in 
mutual relation, and therefore nothing can be demon- 
strated by the study of isolated parts." 

" Truly doth Nature all things tell, 
Nature hath neither shell nor kernel, 
Whole everywhere, at each point thou canst learn all ; 
Only examine thine own heart 
Whether thou shell or kernel art." 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICEE. 



229 



" Would st thou truly study Nature, 
Seek the whole in every feature. 

Newton taught the doctrine of a definite number 
of independent colors ; but with Goethe color is the 
relation between light and darkness; white is the 
color of light, and black of darkness. All its beauty 
and variety come from the fact that light is never 
wholly lost, darkness never w 7 holly escaped. It is 
a grand generalization, if it has not yet been corrobo- 
rated by analysis. So too, in his great biological dis- 
covery, he cannot accept an independent creation 
of leaf, flower, and seed. They stand in relation to 
each other not alone by mutual utility, but by devel- 
opment and the possibility of exchange of function 
and reconversion into each other. 

" All in their forms are kindred, and yet no one like another ; 
So this wonderful choir points to a half-hidden law." 

How deeply he felt the spiritual significance of 
this law, as running through all spheres of being, is 
shown by the poem which he addresses to his be- 
loved one, in w T hich he carries up the analogy from 
the plant to friendship and love. After a description 
of the flower, as scientifically true as it is poetic, he 
concludes : 

" 0, bethink thou then too, how, out of the germ of acquaintance, 
Day by day between us mutual interest grew; 
How in. the depth of our hearts Friendship revealed its full power, 
And how Love came last, bringing the blossoms and fruits. 
Think what manifold hues and shapes, now this, now another, 
Nature in quiet unfolds, and to our feelings imparts. 
Now enjoy thyself fully to-day! for holy affection 



230 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Strives for its highest fruits-, strives for congenial tastes, 
Similar views of all things, that, through harmonious insight, 
Firmly united, the pair thus the true heaven may find." 

So the naturalist is prepared for the great mystery 
of sex, which we recognize to be neither identity nor 
unlikeness ; for the sexes are like stamen and pistil, 
different modifications of the same type, and so per- 
petually varying that it is impossible to make any 
statement of distinguishing characteristics, which will 
be invariably true. We trace analogous polarity 
even in the inorganic world ; yet although one may 
fancifully claim the sharp acid or the inert base as 
dimly representing one or the other sex, no one will 
seriously claim that this distinction is clearly recog- 
nizable, for the characteristic function of creation is 
not found. In the vegetable world, where the func- 
tion is in many cases performed by the whole organ- 
ism, it is difficult to trace any clear lines ; but as we 
find more developed specimens, the functions of parts 
become more distinct ; the root will no longer perform 
the duty of the leaf, nor the leaf that of the flower. 
In the more complex classes of both the vegetable 
and animal world, we separate the sexes broadly by 
the functions of reproduction; and these are gener- 
ally accompanied by secondary characteristics, in 
many cases so strongly marked as at once to indicate 
sex. But throughout these kingdoms, these second- 
ary characteristics are very changeable. The females 
excel in size in the lower orders, and either sex in 
brilliancy and depth of color according to their sur- 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



231 



roundings. Among fishes the male often builds the 
nest and cares for the young, — in some cases even 
on his own body. The female is capable of as great 
violence as the male, and the male, under stress of 
circumstances, can be as devoted and tender as the 
mother. In the animal world sex is less differen- 
tiated in the lowest forms of life ; but the analogy 
does not hold in the spiritual world. In the highest 
types of human, life, we always find a blending of 
the characteristics of the sexes. The illustrations are 
almost too numerous for selection. 

Jesus, Buddha, Fenelon, Diirer, Charles Lamb, — 
even Michel Angelo and Dante, — blend strong femi- 
nine traits with their masculine powers ; and no less 
in Deborah and Zenobia, in Joan of Arc, Isabella of 
Castile, Elizabeth Frye, Lucretia Mott, and Margaret 
Fuller, do we find their full womanliness reinforced 
by powers commonly esteemed masculine. In our 
own immediate circle we can easily trace out the 
same law ; we find the boy-girl and the girl-boy in 
almost every family. The father of the Fair Saint 
"often with suppressed joy called her his misfash- 
ioned son." Coleridge expresses the greatest scorn 
for the man who recognizes no sex in soul ; but the 
difference is so subtile that it has never been well 
stated in words. And yet so rooted in thought is 
this distinction that the most religious souls have felt 
the necessity of recognizing it as existing within the 
bosom of Divinity itself. Theodore Parker would 
not accept Coleridge's dictum, because he knew that 



232 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



in a semi-barbarous civilization, such as ours still is, 
it became the pretext for a claim of sovereignty, and 
a power of oppression ; but he felt the necessity of 
expressing the thought in the beautiful formula with 
which he was wont to begin his prayer : 6t God ! our 
father and our mother both." So the apostle of the 
Brahmo Somaj, — the most original and sincere re- 
ligious movement of our day, though it be still vague 
and undefined, like its Indian predecessors, — recog- 
nizes this truth, and the Divine Maternity is one of 
the leading doctrines of its faith. In fact, this idea, 
mystically expressed in so many old mythologies, is 
to be the guiding star of the better civilization yet to 
come. George Sand says, in one of her letters, " There 
is but one sex " ; yet in spite of her masculine name 
the ewig-weibliche is revealed not only in the moth- 
erly heart, but in the longing for human love and 
the infinite tenderness for humanity expressed in all 
her work. 

How easy to accept, but how impossible to carry 
out, the distinction of sex in the spiritual life ! In 
externals, in the realm of form, it is easy enough to 
make divisions, but in any finer sense it can only be 
felt, no analysis has ever been keen enough to detect 
it. In intellectual life this is shown by the con- 
stantly repeated occurrence of the fact that woman's 
mental work has been wholly accepted as that of 
man. Three of the greatest novelists of our time, 
George Sand, George Eliot, and Currer Bell, while 
known only by the products of their genius, found 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



233 



no eyes keen enough to detect their feminine traits. 
Thackeray, an eminently masculine man, was sure 
George Eliot was of his sex. Dickens was the first 
to detect her secret. The acute critics of Jena de- 
clared " Agnes von Lilien," written by Caroline von 
Lengefeld, to be an anonymous work of Goethe, the 
master mind of Germany. In our own society Charles 
Egbert Craddock found no recognition as a woman 
till she appeared in person to her astonished pub- 
lishers. Had the same outward reasons existed to 
lead Edgar Poe, or Charles Lamb, or Dickens, to mas- 
querade under a woman's name, we might have found 
the caprice and unregulated fancy of woman in " The 
Eaven," the tender sensibility and beauty of her sex 
in " The Essays of Elia," and the warm humanity, the 
morbid sentimentality, and the utter incapacity of 
woman to represent the passion of love, in " Oliver 
Twist" and « Little Dorrit." 

Hermann Grimm, in his " Essay on Goethe and 
Suleika," tells a remarkable and pleasing instance of 
such an interchange of thought between Goethe and 
his young beloved friend, Marianne von Willemer. 
Grimm quoted as one of Goethe's finest poems the 
song, 

" Ach, urn deine feuchten Schwingen 
West, wie sehr ich dich beneide," 

and found to his amazement that it was written 
by the lady ; and he says, " The Divan from which 
this poem was taken was almost carried on like a 
duet between them." Yet who has distinguished 



234 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the masculine and feminine voices in the various 
lines ? 

Open any book in physiology, and it is set down 
for you in broad characters, " Man is strong, reason- 
able, governed by his judgment; Woman is weak, 
emotional, swayed by her feelings." But take this 
formula with you as your chart in active life, and you 
will soon find it a delusive cheat. Witness the ex- 
citement of the Stock Exchange, and the ease with 
which a cyclone of confidence draws all men into its 
fatal grasp, or a sudden blast of doubt scatters the 
trust of the whole business community. Even the 
British House of Commons, the most carefully chosen 
and perhaps the sanest body of men in the world, 
goes into wild delirium at the defeat of a liberal 
ministry. After thirty years' experience in various 
reformatory and benevolent works where men and 
women took part together, I have never been able 
to trace a dividing line, on one side of which were 
the men guided by judgment, and on the other the 
women swayed by feeling. Goethe's men are very 
men, and his women always women, yet he has given 
us almost every shade of character in womanly form. 

In "Elective Affinities, ,, Ottilie is so absolutely 
feminine, according to the recognized type, that she 
is unfit for human life ; like Ophelia, she has no self- 
directing power, and is crushed by the world about 
her, as the simple pressure of the common air breaks 
the fragile glass, exhausted of its resisting medium. 
In her exquisite purity and loveliness sin cannot 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



235 



touch her, yet she is incapable of virtue, and can 
only fly from the battle which she is unable to win. 
Charlotte, too, is womanly, in her calm sense, her 
cold unselfishness, ready to resign all her rights, 
all her happiness, to another's wishes, or a sense of 
duty ; but by that very want of self-assertion, inca- 
pable of strengthening others, and holding them to 
good by the bond of justice. And what has Edward 
of the Masculine but that self-centring thought which 
in its good and evil is characteristic of man ? The 
puzzle of the book is in his unfitness to mate with 
the lovely girl. Sweetness of temper, a crystalline 
frankness of manner, refinement of deportment, and 
capacity for intellectual enjoyment, make him a de- 
lightful companion. His early attraction to Char- 
lotte is renewed when both are freed from outward 
constraint, and can look forward to a life of intellect- 
ual companionship and aesthetic enjoyment. How 
devoid of passion the relation is, becomes evident 
from Charlotte's having planned his marriage with 
Ottilie. But Charlotte is very wise in her own 
domain, and she knew well the danger of destroying 
this happy balance of friendship. Without jealousy 
on her part, it is his friend's introduction into the 
home which she opposes, not Ottilie's. She is the 
self-restrained, reasonable being ; he is the rash and 
self-willed one, w T ho will let nothing stand between 
him and his desire. And it is this warmth of de- 
sire alone which redeems his nature : he does rec- 
ognize that the beloved one is more than himself; 



236 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



and this alone makes it comprehensible that Goethe 
can recognize an eternal union for them. " So lie 
the lovers, sleeping side by side. Peace hovers above 
their resting-place. Fair angel faces gaze down upon 
them from the vaulted ceiling, and what a happy 
moment that will be when one day they wake again 
together." He has blindly loved, but he has rec- 
ognized Love, and 

" Das Ewig-Weibliche 
Zieht ihn hinan." 

Tasso is more poetic and lovely than Edward, but 
is he not equally self-centred ? His life is not 
wrecked on sensual desire, but on the morbid sensi- 
tiveness of his soul, which never enters into the life 
of others, into the generous activity of the Duke, or 
calm wisdom of Antonio, but measures everything 
by himself. His love was as narrow as the learning 
of Faust. He had not learned the secret of relation. 
The Princess sees his need : — 

" "Willst du genau erfahren was sich ziemt 
So frage nur bei edlen Frauen an." 1 

She will have him find, in a love that gives itself 
wholly up, the freedom that he needs. Antonio also 
sees his need of relation, but bids him seek it in 
active life : 

" Der Mensch erkennt sich nur im Menschen ; nur 
Das Leben lehret jedem was er sey." 2 

1 Do you wish to learn truly what is becoming, 
Ask it only of noble women. 

2 Man knows himself only in Men ; only Life 
Teaches every one what he is. 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



237 



* Wilhelm Meister " is the study of the development 
of a human mind. What a part does Woman play in 
it ! Goethe seems striving to find the true type of 
Woman to call forth the noblest in man. How lov- 
ing, fresh, and natural is poor Mariana ! Wilh elm's 
boyish affection rashly indulged, and as he believes 
betrayed, is never forgotten, and only through this 
love is the joy of paternity known. The wise men 
say, " The child is thine, and in our opinion the 
mother was not unworthy of thee." He never fully 
loves again, but is ever seeking for this lost Eden 
of unconscious trusting affection. His feeling for 
Mariana was loving, fresh, and genuine, but regard- 
less of law and duty to others. It was like his pas- 
sion for the stage : when the illusion passed, much 
of the truth and poetry went also, yet it left behind 
remorse never silenced, and regret never satisfied. 
How striking is the tenacity of this feeling, and the 
facility with which a fancied resemblance makes 
him believe that a fateful past can be recalled ! Vary- 
ing impulses play over him, yet there is an evident 
progress in the development of his ideal. He enjoys 
only superficially the toying of Phillina, sensuous 
and graceful as it is. She only " pressed to the door 
of his heart, but never entered." He meets with fa- 
therly care the unearthly love of Mignon ; he longs to 
bring into his life the strong practical good-sense of 
Theresa ; he is fascinated by the beauty of the Count- 
ess, the spiritual grace of Natalia, — but they are only 
shadows of things to come, which never come. He 



238 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

is ever a scholar, trying all phases of life. He 
has never become a Man, and so has never found 
his true relation to Woman. Yet keeping his ideal 
high and pure, we still watch for his unfolding, 
sure that the Eternally Womanly is leading him up. 

In Macaria, who appears only towards the conclu- 
sion of " Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre," (if there 
be a conclusion to a work so wandering,) we have a 
type of woman whose influence approaches that of 
" das Ewig-Weibliche." She has nothing of the 
attributes of passion, the sensuousness of sex; but 
by her unselfish w T isdom, by the power which she 
has gained from suffering and thought, to look 
clearly upon human affairs in their largest relations, 
she becomes confessor and counsellor to all within 
her range, — always leading them to be true to them- 
selves, while in her " light do they see light." This 
function belongs to the post-maternal period of life, 
and has ever been recognized in the Virgin becom- 
ing the Seeress. Macaria's mystical relations to 
heavenly bodies indicate the universal reach of her 
influence and central source of her inspirations. 

The deep sense of the overpowering sanctity and 
importance of the relation of Man to Woman appears 
in many of the minor dramas, I might perhaps say in 
all of them. Goethe places it in every light. Eugenia, 
in "Die Naturliche Tochter," finds herself suddenly 
placed in an exceptional position. She will be raised 
above the multitude by rank and power. She grasps 
at the outward signs of it, to find it slipping from 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



239 



her grasp. She has been false to the relation of the 
individual to the whole, and the whole, represented 
by the Church and the State, threatens to crush her. 
How can she be saved ? Only by the acceptance of 
the marriage relation, whose sanctity and power are 
set forth by the simple burgher : 

" Im Hause wo der Gatte sicher waltet, 
Da wohnt allein der Friede, den vergebens 
In weiten du, da draussen suchen magst." 1 

And again : 

" Als Gatte kann ich mit dem Konig rechnen." 2 

He too recognizes the function of the wife : 

" So fuhrt ein edles Weib ihn leicht ans Ziel. 
Hinauf zur hbchsten Frauen kehr er sich." 3 

The marriage which can save is of the heart and 
soul, as the monk expresses it : 

" Den Wunsch der Liebe, die zum All das Eine, 
Zum Ewigen das Gegenwartige 
Das Fluchtige zum Dauernden erhebt, 
Den zu erfiillen ist sein gottlich Amt." * 

1 In the bouse where the husband surely directs, 

There alone dwells peace, which in vain in the distance 
Thou out there in the world mayst seek. 

2 As husband can I reckon with the king. 

3 So does a noble wife easily lead him to the goal. 
Up to the highest women does he strive. 

4 The wish of Love, which raises one to the All, the present to 
the Eternal, the fleeting to the Everlasting, that to fulfil is her 
godlike office. 



240 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



In the Old Harper's history we have the uncon- 
scious violation of a natural law, bringing intense 
tragedy, but not destruction of inward purity. In 
" Die Geschwister " we have the sweet regard of a 
sister unconsciously intensified by the difference of 
sex, and changed into happy love when the true rela- 
tion is revealed. In " Die Wette," a pretty little com- 
edy, the lighter characteristics of the two sexes are 
very pleasantly painted, and the lesson of mutual for- 
bearance and concession gently taught. 

In " Clavigo," Goethe reproduces in tragic form 
what was not so tragic, his love for Frederika; and 
here is the same thought which ever haunted him, — 
it is the womanly which tests man. Clavigo had 
failed to stand this test, had been untrue to love, and 
only tragedy is possible. Eepentance does not help. 
The young, romantic heart does not accept any salving 
of sores, any of nature's processes of filling up chasms 
with new growth. Eepentance cannot heal this sin, 
for no reparation is possible ; relation is broken, faith 
is destroyed. Even in the moment of hoped for 
reunion, Marie recognizes that the old tie cannot be 
restored. Clavigo has passed into another mood : 
the opportunity is gone. Death alone, resolving the 
mortal back into the immortal, can restore this rela- 
tion, and only when the Eternally Womanly leads 
him upward can he leave sin behind ? So also in 
" Stella," Fernando has placed himself in the conflict 
between passionate love and recognized self-imposed 
duty. He has dared to play with this greatest of 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



241 



human relations, and he is overwhelmed by the forces 
he has set in motion. For this wrong no earthly rep- 
aration is possible ; property may be restored, slander 
may be refuted, anger may be atoned for, but this 
wrong cannot be righted. 'No unselfishness, no mag- 
nanimity, on the part of his victims, avails aught : 
each would sacrifice to the other, but neither can give 
what she cannot hold, and only Death, which dissolves 
all earthly ties, can make new life possible. In the 
novellettes in " Wilhelm Meister," Goethe seems to 
put this relation of love and marriage in every possi- 
ble light : they are like the changes of a kaleidoscope, 
beautiful but fleeting. He seems to warn against his 
own besetting sin of mistaking the transient for the 
permanent. With this intense feeling of the mission 
of love and the sanctity of marriage, Goethe himself 
never had a full and perfect relation to a woman. 
The force of his being was expended in those transi- 
tory affections which, as Tennyson says, 

" Are but embassies of love 
To tamper with the feelings, ere he found 
Empire for life." 

With Frau von Stein his intellectual yearning for 
sympathy found full satisfaction, and his Christiane 
gave him for a time the homelike content, more often 
known in the cottager's hut than in the palace, which 
he had never had before. But the tragedy of his life, 
so often referred to as a wonderfully fortunate one, 
was just here. He never found the true family life, 
and, as husband and father, shared little of the joy 

16 



242 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE, 



which makes so many humble lives infinitely blessed. 
Is it for this reason that he has never been able to 
paint a successful, happy love, but in the simplicity 
of peasant life in " Hermann und Dorothea," or " Die 
Geschwister," or in the dim perspective of history in 
Gotz and his faithful wife ? 

In his own life, domestic love took on a very quiet 
and humble form. How his heart must have longed 
for this life, — he who was so sensitive to tenderness, 
and had such a thirst for human relation ! Where 
shall we find a more concise and comprehensive ex- 
pression of family love and life as representing the 
eternal mysteries of creation, than in the words of the 
Chorus after the birth of Euphorion ? 

" Love in human wise to bless us 
In a noble pair must be ; 
But divinely to possess us 

It must form a precious Three." 

all-sufficiency of Love is told in simplest 

a All we seek has therefore found us, 
I am thine and thou art mine ; 
So we stand as Love hath bound us, 
Other fortune we resign." 

In the family is the most perfect expression of the 
Eternal Trinity, that great mystic doctrine running 
through many religions, which has been so dwarfed 
and narrowed by being made individual and dogmatic. 
But it runs as the simplest, plainest law through 
mechanics and chemistry, as well as biology and met- 



And the 
words : 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



243 



aphysics, — the One, the Two, the resulting Third, — 
the union of differences in likeness producing a new 
creation. Goethe saw this, and if he fails to paint it 
fully, it is because he had not known it in his own 
experience. 

In the First Part of " Faust," the great work in 
which Goethe sought to read the riddle of life, fail- 
ing, as all will fail till life is fully accomplished, das 
Weibliche is the moving power. Faust is the unre- 
lated man, devoted to knowledge only for himself. 
He exhausts every source of learning and thought, 
only to find himself wholly unfed and unsatisfied, and 
is ready to grant any terms on which he may secure 
a consciousness of life and joy. He makes the hasty 
compact to buy what a true faith would have given 
him. Woman by her beauty first calls him out of 
himself, and he seeks union with others. In the First 
Part he asks only his personal gratification, and he 
cannot enter into true relation with others, for he has 
not found himself. He is the sport of unformed de- 
sires, he does not recognize the necessity or beauty 
of law. The Devil is his guide, the incarnate spirit 
that denies. How can he lead him to true love ? 
It is the simplest feeling of attraction to a person, 
not any ideal relation to the universal, which leads 
him on. 

Heedlessly he breaks the highest law of love, 
winch bids us seek not our own good, but the welfare 
of the beloved ; and the human law which should rep- 
resent the inward principle revenges itself upon him. 



244 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



How ? Not by direct infliction of outward punish- 
ment, but through the misery of the beloved one. 
Woman's misery, man's degradation, is the result of 
the broken law of love. The redeemer buys with his 
own sacrifice the redemption he works for others. 
Faust is still free to follow his selfish course ; but 
never again unconsciously : the gadfly of conscience 
is aroused, which will not cease to sting him till he is 
elevated into true life. Yet in spite of his selfishness 
and sin he has loved ; he has recognized that self is 
not all ; he has known the highest human relation ; 
he has acknowledged the existence of something 
not himself, yet to which he is eternally bound. So 
he is led out of abstraction into personality. Even 
through sin, still more through suffering, he has 
learned the lesson of relation to others, w T hich in the 
Second Part is to be worked out, not in the simplicity 
of individual love, but on the broad scale of Human- 
ity. Through all the wild masquerading of its many 
scenes, we find him learning this lesson. He seeks 
to become a benefactor to mankind, but at first how 
wildly, — with the help of the Devil ! The scheme 
of spreading universal happiness by producing an 
abundance of paper money, devised by Mephistophe- 
les and since followed by his successors, while it is 
undoubtedly a satire on South Sea and other wild 
financial schemes, may also fitly represent that selfish 
benevolence which finds pleasure in beholding the 
transient enjoyment of those around us, whether it 
is based on good or evil. The women see the char- 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 



245 



latanry of the great mask, and mock at the false 
magician who is — nothing ; not even feeling when 
one pinches him. Here in homely form is a hint 
of the quality of Woman which is expressed in the 
last line. The Womanly tests life by a more delicate 
analysis than masculine logic supplies. Woman con- 
siders things in their relations. This is the quality 
of judgment which we recognize as specially wo- 
manly, and which has been manifested on a large 
scale by queens and empresses, as in every-day life 
in the management of a household and the control 
of children. 

The mystical charm with which Goethe loved to 
surround the feminine, while keeping its peculiar 
function ever in mind, is shown by his introduction 
of the Mothers in " Faust." This passage has been 
the despair of commentators. An obscure phrase in 
Plutarch, calling the Goddesses "the Mothers," seems 
to have excited his imagination, and he uses this term 
as the most powerful and suggestive of names, with- 
out feeling called upon to offer any explanation of it. 
Yet it has a power for Faust, and a terror even for 
Mephistopheles, who may well feel it to be utterly 
outside of his realm. The various metaphysical anal- 
yses of this phrase seem very wide of the mark ; it 
is the all-including comprehensiveness of the expres- 
sion which gives it a charm and terror. As the little 
child believes that the mother can answer all ques- 
tions and satisfy all wants, is it strange that man 
should come back to a longing for the motherly 



246 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



power? Goethe has said, " Express thyself, and 't will 
a riddle be/' — this simplest of all words is full of 
mystery and terror. Why should Faust be appalled 
at their very name ? What is the meaning of the 
key which is to lead him to them ? Is the key the 
childlike trust which Faust has lost, and which would 
make motherhood an attraction, and not a terror ? 
When we can carry our desires into the presence 
of the Divine Motherhood, they must have become 
righteous and holy. Faust goes to the mothers to 
grant the fulfilment of his longing for beauty and 
love. 

Here his escape from the power of Mephistophe- 
les seems to begin. It has already become another 
love than that to which Mephistopheles first led 
him. It is not he in his individual being who is 
wedded to a beautiful maiden. It is the spirit of his 
country, German thought, which seeks after Greek 
beauty, and from this union is born the modern poet. 
This love does not become tragic in its results, like 
his attraction to Margaret ; it is indeed only an image 
of love, but it truly represents it as not for themselves 
alone, but for the whole of Humanity. 

If we take Helena in the literary sense- for Classic 
culture, while Faust represents the German, may not 
the appeal to the Mothers represent that return to 
the old primitive thought, the universal source, which 
always accompanies every new radical movement in 
thought ? We must relate our special movement to 
the universal, and the new must strike its roots deep 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICRE. 247 



into the old. It seems hopeless to attempt to fathom 
the precise meaning with which Goethe uses this 
phrase, yet it is certain that it meant a great deal to 
him, and that when interpreted by his own voice and 
manner it strongly impressed others. Eckermann 
writes : — 

" To-day, as a supplement to the dinner, Goethe gave 
me a great enjoyment by reading to me the scene where 
Faust goes to the Mothers. The new, unsuspected char- 
acter of the subject, together with the tone and manner in 
which Goethe recited the scene, took hold of me with won- 
derful power, so that I found myself at once in the condi- 
tion of Faust, who feels a shudder creep over him when 
Mephistopheles makes the communication. I had heard 
and clearly comprehended the description, but so much of 
it remained enigmatical to me that I felt myself forced to 
beg Goethe to enlighten me a little. He however, accord- 
ing to his usual habit, assumed a mysterious air, looking 
at me with wide-open eyes, and repeating the words, — 

' The Mothers ! Mothers ! It sounds so strange/ " 

This Second Part of " Faust " seems at first like 
a wild chaos. In it are the riches of a hundred 
dramas, but it is not crystallized into clearness and 
symmetry. It was Goethe's study of life, and he 
could not marshal it all into line, as a lesser man 
might do his lesser riches. Yet there is one simple 
thought running through it all, and, as he expresses 
it in the last grand verse, we see it is the plainest 
religious truth, — that which enters into every faith, 
which underlies the beautiful in art, the ideal in 



248 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

philosophy, the essence of morality, the meaning of 
life. It is the sense of the relation of the individual 
to the universal. We never think, never can think, 
of the feminine alone. It is not what separates her 
from others, but what gives the power of union, which 
makes her feminine, and so creative. And the mas- 
culine knows itself only in its relation to the femi- 
nine. So it is that the eternally feminine " draws us 
by sweet leadings " of beauty to love, to union, to 
new creation. But in using these words, we must 
remember that these human forms which we live 
among, and which flit past us like the changing 
phantoms in Goethe's half-mocking drama, are but 
shadows and types. Sex, as we see it gradually 
evolved out of the chemical relations of the mineral 
world, the fertilization of flowers, the wooing of the 
oriole and the bobolink in the spring-time, the chiv- 
alry of the cock, and the fierce jealousy of the tiger, 
to its beautiful outcome in the highest human rela- 
tion, which is the never-wearying theme of romance 
and poetry, is a shadowing forth of the duality in 
the original spirit out of which comes the creative 
energy manifested in the universe. As we have 
seen, this double strand is woven in and out through- 
out nature, and in trying to trace it we are con- 
stantly bewildered by finding its place and attitude 
changing. We cry, " Lo here ! and, Lo there ! " but 
like the kingdom of God, it is within us and found 
everywhere. If it represents duality, it equally rep- 
resents unity and universality, and we may as well 



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE. 249 



divide the rainbow by arbitrary lines, as seek to put 
asunder those differing phases of His creative agency 
which God has so closely joined together. Yet the 
difference of sexes is as expressive and necessary 
as their unity, and their functions cannot be con- 
founded. Mythology has made woman the repre- 
sentative of attraction to evil, because it had not 
learned that life is good ; but Goethe's inspired Muse, 
who knew that secret, and held the Faust to be 
redeemed who had at last found it good, taught that 
woman leads indeed through varied and dangerous 
paths, but still leads to life ; and it is a grand accept- 
ance of life, and its experience and its teachings, 
which bids him close his great drama with a recog- 
nition of this truth, — Das Ewig Weihliche zieht uns 
hinan. 



NOTE. 

As the various reports of the School have made it 
apparent that the doctrine of this lecture was misun- 
derstood, I have added the following Synopsis : — 

There is, even in the Divine Nature, as we are 
forced to conceive it, a polarity, or power of differen- 
tiation which is eternal, — ewig. 

This polarity running through all nature, even the 
inanimate and inorganic, appears as sex, — suggested 
in the vegetable kingdom, and slowly evolved in the 



250 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



animal world, taking its most complete form in the 
Human Being. 

Its distinctive characteristics appear as impulse 
and attraction. Its function is creation, and while 
the masculine is stimulating and life-giving, the 
feminine is receptive and productive. 

This central difference, complicated with all the 
circumstances of existence, produces many secondary 
characteristics illustrative of sex ; but these secondary 
characteristics are in the process of evolution un- 
stable and interchangeable. These principles, though 
separated in our ultimate thought, are constantly 
blended in manifestation. Nature works to produce 
embryo wholes, and not ever-widening monstrosities. 
Hence, while our ideal of das mannliche and das weib- 
liche may be sharply defined as force and attraction, 
or centrifugal and centripetal, or J ustice and Mercy, 
its manifestation in persons is rarely distinct ; but by 
the double descent the two are blended in every 
individual, and in the highest natures the most 
perfectly. 

The office of mortal life is to develop the spiritual 
nature by the constant manifestation, action, and 
reaction of these principles on each other, so as to 
attain the widest universality, and the most perfect 
unity. They play an equal part in the great drama 
of Life ; but as the feminine represents attraction, 
this is the leading principle which draws us upward 
and on. 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



251 



IX. 

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 

/ 

By S. H. EMERY, Jr. 

This special creation of the great artist, whose 
genius and work are the principal theme of this ses- 
sion of the Summer School of Philosophy, belongs to 
that particular form of art which is named " The 
Novel." Perhaps it is the only work of our author 
which can properly be so classified. Goethe himself 
seems to have been in doubt about the appropriate- 
ness of the title to this work, for he is reported by 
Eckermann as saying, with reference to the sketch 
of the Child and the Lion, called " A Tale " in Dr. 
Hedge's edition of Goethe's Works : — 

" I '11 tell you what, we will call it ' The Novel ' ; for 
what is a novel but a peculiar and as yet unheard-of 
event ] This is the proper meaning of this name ; and 
much which in Germany passes as a novel is no novel at 
all, but a. mere narrative, or whatever else you like to 
call it. In that original sense of an unheard-of event, 
even the 'Elective Affinities' may be called a novel.' ' 

Goethe's definition of the novel does not distin- 
guish it from the romance, nor from short tales and 



252 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



sketches, such as the work the name for which he 
was considering. A brief consideration of the place 
of the novel in the system of art is not impertinent 
here. 

The novel, as a work of art, belongs to the domain 
of Poetry, and therefore, so far as the material it 
uses is concerned, is capable of the most complete 
expression of the highest ideal in art. It has the 
external characteristics of the prose form, but is 
essentially poetic. Goethe says that the "Elective 
Affinities " is a poetic production. The fundamental 
art element in poetry is not the rhyme, the rhythm, 
or the harmony of the verse, but the image. The 
true is therein represented in an image; not an 
actually existent, external, spatial image, but an 
internal form of the imagination, — " images preserved 
in the spirit and recalled by it " ; this makes the 
presentation artistic. Art manifests the whole in 
the part. This fundamental element of art is the 
basis of the novel in point of form. 

In point of content, it belongs to that phase of art 
which is called by Hegel " Eomantic Art." It por- 
trays the individual working out the problem of his 
spiritual development, — either, on the one side, sub- 
jective passions, caprices, desires, even good but mis- 
taken intentions, on the other side the universal 
and eternal verities, into harmony with which the 
individual must come ; or, with equal validity, on 
the one side the universal and eternal as realized in 
the individual spirit, on the other side, the exter- 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



253 



nally capricious and accidental: but in either case 
it portrays a struggle for spiritual harmony. 

The novel proper is of modern English origin, 
dating from about the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. It is distinguished from the romance, 
which is a narrative of wonders, strange, improba- 
ble events ; while the novel accommodates itself, for 
the most part, to ordinary society and the ordinary 
course of human affairs, seeking to draw attention to, 
and excite our interest in, the collisions of the sub- 
jective with the objective. A writer in the Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica mentions as a fact that the rise of 
the novel is coincident with the decline of the drama, 
and attributes both to the change in the spirit of the 
age. Goethe in "Meister" expresses the true dis- 
tinction between the novel and the drama in point 
of content and method. He says : — 

"In the novel as well as in the drama, it is human 
nature and human action that we see. . . . But in the 
novel it is chiefly sentiments and events that are exhibited ; 
in the drama it is character and deeds. The novel must 
go slowly forward, and the sentiments of the hero, by 
one means or another, must restrain the tendency of 
the whole to unfold itself and to conclude. The drama, 
on the other hand, must hasten, and the character of 
the hero must press forward to the end ; it does not re- 
strain, but is restrained.' , 

There can be no doubt that for the modern English 
mind the novel is a more effective form of art than 
the drama ; perhaps because the novel, as being 



254 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



nearer to the verge of art, is better adapted to a 
prosaic age and nation. The wider range of incident 
and more minute analysis of character are more in 
accordance with the disposition and taste of a highly 
civilized people, than the strong situations and pow- 
erful effects which are necessary to the drama. The 
picture of life presented is also more true to the 
present reality, and therefore takes hold of the in- 
terest more readily. 

The " Elective Affinities " has then a special in- 
terest, as an example of a form of art more distinct- 
ively peculiar than any other to our time, and to 
the English consciousness. I have said, also, that 
it is perhaps the only work of our author which is, 
strictly speaking, a novel, as we ordinarily under- 
stand the term. The novel proper falls between the 
romance and the disquisition, and the " Elective 
Affinities" seems to occupy this middle ground more 
consistently than any other work of Goethe. It has 
variety of place, time, action, and persons, to distin- 
guish it from a sketch or tale ; it presents a picture 
of life, which seems true to the ordinary conditions 
of the place and time wherein the scene is laid ; its 
incidents are for the most part commonplace, rather 
than romantic, in the sense of startling, wonderful, 
unreal ; and its story does not impress the reader as 
a merely artificial and external thread, on which the 
author has strung disquisitions upon every imagina- 
ble subject. On the contrary the story furnishes, as 
in a novel it should, the necessary field for the col- 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



255 



lisions sought to be portrayed. A critic has said of 
Goethe's novels generally : — 

" They are ingenious speculations on painting, agri- 
culture, landscape-gardening, etc., connected by a thread 
of mystical narrative, and introducing us to a set of be- 
ings without the least trace of reality about them, who 
all appear to be playing some theatrical part in a dreamy 
representation of life, which seems to have no intelligible 
object." 

But this criticism is entirely inappropriate to the 
" Elective Affinities/' though that has episodical pas- 
sages, which might be called " ingenious speculations " 
on gardening, architecture, painting, chemistry, and 
other subjects ; and it doubtless in a deep way justi- 
fies Goethe's statement that it is a novel because it is 
a before unheard-of event. The critic proceeds to 
say : — 

" A novel which does not explain its purpose without 
a commentary seems to violate the essential laws of such 
compositions ; but a novel in regard to the object of 
which no two commentators agree, is an anomaly in 
literature." 

If this criticism were to be accepted as final, it 
would dispose of the claim of the " Elective Affinities " 
to be considered a novel, for there has certainly been a 
wide disagreement among the commentators as to its 
purpose ; but it very naturally occurs to one that this 
result may rather be the fault of the commentators 
than of the novel. It must have been surprising to 



256 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Goethe, for he seems to have doubted whether he had 
not made his meaning too plain, to the detriment of 
his art. Soret reports him as saying, — 

" The only production of greater extent, in which I am 
conscious of having labored to set forth a pervading idea 
is probably my 6 Elective Affinities.' This novel has thus 
become comprehensible to the understanding ; bat I will 
not say that it is therefore better. I am rather of the 
opinion, that the more incommensurable and the more 
incomprehensible to the understanding a poetic produc- 
tion is, so much the better it is." 

You will notice that Goethe's conception of the 
proper aim of the artist in this regard differs funda- 
mentally from that of his critic ; hence, it is not sur- 
prising that the critic should not have been pleased 
with the results. 

With these preliminary general observations we 
will proceed to an examination of the " sentiments 
and events " which Goethe has portrayed in the 
u Elective Affinities," reserving our consideration of 
the special content of this novel for the conclusion. 
We have it on the authority of Goethe, that the novel 
was written with a conscious pervading purpose, and 
we must try to ascertain what the purpose was, or 
better, perhaps, what has really been done ; for the 
purpose in and of itself might be accidental and 
temporary. 

The title "Elective Affinities " Goethe justifies, 
early in the work, in a conversation between Edward, 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



257 



Charlotte, and the Captain, in the course of which it 
is explained that " elective affinity " is the technical 
scientific term applied to those instances of chemical 
action where, on the presentation to a compound sub- 
stance of a third, one of the elements of the com- 
pound will leave its combination and combine with 
the third, thus exhibiting a natural election between 
the two possible combinations. The most important 
and remarkable cases of this action are where the 
separation and uniting are both double ; that is, where 
two compounds, on being brought together, each di- 
vide and reunite with change of partners. This is 
chemically analogous to what sometimes happens in 
human society, when the casual introduction of a 
third person utterly destroys a connection, apparently 
indissoluble, between two, through presenting oppor- 
tunity for a new and naturally more urgent combina- 
tion; but Charlotte warns us that man is placed 
many steps above chemical elements, and that he 
will do well to consider carefully the validity of the 
analogy as applied to himself. The incidents of the 
novel exhibit the workings of a double elective affin- 
ity in the human sphere : hence the name. The scene 
of the story is the estate of a German nobleman, and 
the time probably contemporaneous with the writing. 
Neither year nor real location is anywhere mentioned. 

Solger wrote, in a letter to Tieck, an elaborate crit- 
icism of the "Elective Affinities," which interested 
and pleased Goethe, who says, " It would not be easy 
to say anything better about that novel." In the 

17 



258 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



course of this critical survey Solger said, " The facts 
of the ' Elective Affinities ' had their germ in the na- 
ture of all the characters." We will therefore con- 
sider the principal characters before examining the 
incidents. They interest us, not only in themselves, 
but as general types. 

Edward was the only, and consequently spoiled, 
child of wealthy parents, from whom large posses- 
sions had descended to him. In early life he had 
met and loved Charlotte, who loved him. He mar- 
ried, however, through the persuasion of his parents 
and while dissatisfied with Charlotte's reserve, a 
wealthy lady far older than himself, who petted and 
indulged him in every way, and, dying, left him free, 
in the prime of life, to return to Charlotte, whom he 
married; and he is introduced at the beginning of 
the story as living with Charlotte alone, soon after 
their marriage, at his ancestral castle. He is appar- 
ently " equal to all contingencies and changes, with 
desires never excessive, but multiple and various; 
free-hearted, generous, brave, at times even noble"; 
he has had large experience of life, at court, in the 
army, and in travelling, but has never been thwarted, 
and has not learned self-restraint. His return to 
Charlotte was due to a sort of romantic remembrance 
of their early love, and to a desire to settle down qui- 
etly to a delicious leisure with a pleasant companion, 
rather than to a strong, absorbing passion. He is 
of good disposition, and has not fallen into vices, but 
he has little constancy or perseverance; even his 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



259 



flute-playing is not good, because, although he would 
for a little while prosecute it with industry, he would 
soon tire of the effort. His favorite method of decis- 
ion as to courses of action, where decision is difficult, 
is to submit the matter to chance. He is amiable 
and considerate, but impulsive, ardent, and youthful ; 
without substantial character, settled convictions, or 
high purposes. He is in danger of becoming a 
drunkard when things go against him. He has never 
learned to forego his immediate desire, is vehement 
and obstinate, and thinks life valueless unless he can 
have what, at the moment, seems to him a necessity 
of his nature. Hence, he is essentially extravagant, 
sacrificing always the distant to the near. He pre- 
fers death to disappointment in love. Goethe says, 
speaking of Solger's criticism of Edward : — 

" I do not quarrel with him because he cannot endure 
Edward. I myself cannot endure him, but was obliged 
to make him such a man in order to bring out my fact. 
He is, besides, very true to nature ; for you find many 
people in the higher ranks with whom, quite like him, 
obstinacy takes the place of character. ■* 

Charlotte is a quite opposite character. She is a 
prudent, wise, fore-looking person. Her instincts are 
conservative and tenacious of institutional require- 
ments, and she recognizes that the family is woman's 
special institution. She is domestic, careful, and eco- 
nomical ; she keeps the accounts and pays the bills. 
Perhaps she is more excitable and quicker to feel 



260 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



even than Edward, but with power of self-restraint, 
and always ready to subordinate her feelings to her 
judgment. She does not willingly allow herself to 
be surprised into emotion. With tact and self-pos- 
session to see and do the right thing in any emer- 
gency she unites self-sacrifice, so that she is willing 
to do what she believes to be right, at whatever cost to 
herself ; with fortitude also, so that she can insist 
upon the present suffering of those she loves, for their 
ultimate best good, even in spite of their shrinking, 
added to the pain of her own heart. She is a con- 
stant and reserved, not a passionate and effusive, 
lover. One can believe that when she gave her hand, 
after Edward's first marriage, without any special mo- 
tive, to an excellent man, whom she could respect 
if she could not love, she did it, not because she 
had forgotten Edward, but because she thought it 
unwise to sacrifice her life to a hopeless passion. It 
would seem that she should have been a devoted 
mother, yet she is not ; and possibly Goethe means 
thereby to intimate that maternal love and devotion 
are dependent upon supreme love for the father, which 
was lacking in Charlotte's case. However this may 
be, Charlotte is a conscientious mother, but not 
passionately fond of her children. Her chief weak- 
ness lies in allowing herself to be over-persuaded 
against her instincts and judgment. When Edward 
returned to her, and urged marriage, she hesitated : 
she felt that it was not prudent ; that during the 
interval of their separation she had outgrown him, 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



261 



though they were of about the same age, and that 
the love of their youth had changed to friendship ; 
yet his urgent solicitation overcame her doubts. So 
too when Edward impulsively proposed the introduc- 
tion of a third person into their home, she said, " My 
feeling is against this plan ; I have an instinct which 
tells me no good will come of it " ; yet she yielded. 
From these two concessions arise the complications 
of the story. 

The Captain is a man of affairs, reserved, laconic, 
sedate, accomplished, and self-restrained. Up to the 
time when Edward invites him to the castle, he has 
found no situation in life which he considers worthy 
of his own ability and accomplishments ; and al- 
though he is not wealthy, finding strict economy and 
occasional assistance from his friend Edward neces- 
sary to the maintenance of his accustomed style of 
living, he will not accept offered positions which seem 
to him not suitable to enlist all his energies, in direc- 
tions where he can accomplish substantial, perma- 
nent benefit to the world. He is orderly, methodical, 
industrious, persistent, laborious, tireless, and consci- 
entious in his work ; never willing to leave undone 
what he has begun, or to surrender a position into 
incompetent hands, — despising a man who wishes 
to insure that he shall be appreciated and missed 
through the failure of those who have displaced him. 
His passions are substantially under his control, and 
we are not surprised to find him urging upon Edward 
the claims of institutions and society as paramount 



262 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



to individual inclination, by all the arguments of a 
mature, self-poised man of the world, though success 
would destroy the Captain's own hopes. 

Ottilie is the most interesting and the most attract- 
ive character in the novel. She is introduced to us 
as a young girl at school, and Goethe describes her 
character as it appears to the Mother Superior, who 
does not love her, and to the Assistant, who does. 
She is an orphan, has been adopted by Charlotte, 
who is her aunt and was her mother's most intimate 
friend, and has been placed at the school with Luci- 
ana, the daughter of Charlotte. The Lady Superior 
says of Ottilie, " She is always unassuming, always 
ready to oblige others ; but it is not pleasant to see 
her so timid, so almost servile." She thinks her too 
abstemious as to personal comfort and adornment, 
in her eating, drinking, and dressing ; but says, 
" She keeps her things very nice and clean." The 
Lady Superior's suggestion as to Ottilie's habit of 
abstinence from proper food is obviously intended 
to prevent the misapprehension that Ottilie, at the 
crisis of her life, wilfully committed suicide by star- 
vation. 

At the school examination Ottilie utterly fails, and 
the Assistant tells us why. She is very slow to learn, 
and cannot learn at all by rote. Everything must 
come to her by slow, successive steps, and with the 
logical connection perfectly explicit and fully seized. 
She learns like one who is to educate, and her pro- 
gress, though slow, is sure. But brilliancy at an 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 263 



examination is not possible to her. She is inevitably 
behind her companions in superficial acquisition, and 
besides, when she is asked a question about what she 
does know, she seems to know nothing; even her 
handwriting exhibits this slowness and stiffness, 
though it is not without character. The Assistant 
excuses the examiners for their lack of appreciation 
of Ottilie, for it is their function to appraise accom- 
plishments, not capabilities ; yet he is sure that she 
has been born for the good and happiness of others, 
and assuredly also for her own, and that the fruits of 
her labors will develop themselves sooner or later 
into a beautiful life. 

Goethe brings the saintliness of Ottilie into prom- 
inence by the Assistant's description of a saintly 
gesture, which is habitual to her; and he tells us 
that when, in the Young Architect's tableau, she ap- 
peared as the Mother of God, " she excelled all that 
any painter has represented." We find that Ottilie 
is beautiful in person, affectionate, and appreciative ; 
that she has that exceedingly agreeable faculty of en- 
tertaining one by her listening ; that in the domestic 
sphere she is very quick to learn and very skilful in 
directive power, knowing how to direct, and able also 
to set right herself anything undone or wrongly done ; 
very methodical she is too, dividing her day and 
assigning to each division its own labors. The whole 
management of the household is soon given up to her ; 
even Charlotte's child is her especial care. She is a 
delightful companion for both women and men, and 



264 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



at Charlotte's request makes for herself most tasteful 
dresses. Goethe says she becomes thus more and 
more a delight to all who behold her, for human 
beauty appeals both to the outward and to the in- 
ward sense, and " whoever looks upon it is charmed 
against the breath of evil and feels in harmony with 
himself and with the world." She is exceedingly 
and increasingly anxious to be of service, — half a 
word is enough for her here ; " with her calm attentive- 
ness, and her easy, unexcited activity, she is always 
the same ; sitting, rising up, going, coming, fetching, 
carrying, returning to her place again, all in the most 
perfect repose," — constant change, constant agreeable 
movement, yet always a calm placidity. Her desire 
to serve is excessive and needs restraint, appearing 
servile to one not appreciating its motive, as it did to 
the Lady Superior. She alone, of all the characters, 
unless perhaps the Young Architect, seems to have 
religious sentiment ; she feels the pervading presence 
of God, sees His hand in her afflictions, and asks His 
aid and comfort. Her artistic talent is quite remark- 
able, though it does not rise to genius. She has the 
clairvoyant temperament, can see her lover by second- 
sight, and feels buried treasures. She is so attractive 
to men that in any company she is the centre of 
attraction. The Captain, the Count, and the Baron 
all seek her society, and the Assistant and the Young 
Architect, besides Edward, are her lovers. Yet their 
love is unsought, and is a surprise to her. There is 
no trace of the coquette in her character. Goethe 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



265 



indicates the universality of her fascination by mak- 
ing her so attractive to such different men. 

Ottilie's love is so unselfish that she could sur- 
render 'Edward willingly, if his best good demanded 
the sacrifice, while Edward's love is intensely selfish. 
It seems as if Goethe gave to Ottilie every character- 
istic of body, mind, and spirit which he considered 
desirable in a woman. When Ottilie died, all the 
people followed, or rather crowded around, her bier ; 
men, women, boys, and especially the girls who had 
been her pupils, — there was not one among them 
all unmoved. Even her lifeless body had the saintly 
virtue of healing, so that he who touched it was re- 
stored to health, and great crowds made pilgrimages 
to her tomb as to the shrine of a saint. 

Lewes says of Ottilie's Diary, that it gives us, in- 
stead of the impassioned feelings of a young girl, the 
thoughts of an old man. Goethe himself says that 
the larger proportion of the sentences could not have 
arisen from her own reflection, but must have been 
copied from something which took her fancy. There 
are parts of the Diary, however, which are evidently 
intended as revelations of Ottilie's own feelings, and 
these exhibit the patient waiting which is charac- 
teristic of her. There are no passionate longings for 
immediate possession of her lover; she is content 
to look forward to lying side by side with him in the 
grave. The impetuous, vehement Bettine writes to 
Goethe, in regard to Ottilie : " It is not maidenly for 
her to leave her lover, and not to wait from him the 



266 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

unfolding of her fate ; it is not womanly that she 
does not consider his fate alone." It were evident 
enough without this criticism that Bettine is not the 
original of Ottilie. It lies in Ottilie's nature that 
her very innocence should expose her to the fatal 
entanglement of a love impossible of realization on 
earth. With her deep, undemonstrative nature, her 
surrender to the guidance of others, her desire to do 
right, her little self-reliance, but great capacity si- 
lently to endure, she is sure, if - she love unwisely, to 
die for love. One feels her fascination, and can pardon 
her mistake. 

The four characters already considered are the 
principal persons of the story ; their sentiments are 
the theme, and the events are important only as they 
affect these persons. The other characters, though 
subordinate, are very interesting, and worthy of seri- 
ous study, but we must at this time dismiss them 
hurriedly. 

Mittler is a unique creation, and one would sup- 
pose hardly to be met with in real life ; yet Goethe 
says of this character, that " a person whom he had 
never seen or known in his life had supposed the 
character of Mittler to be meant for himself." He 
adds, " There must be some truth in this character, 
and it must have existed more than once in the 
world." He is, as his name indicates, a mediator, (his 
only business in life being to settle disputes,) and 
he serves two important purposes. Into his mouth 
Goethe puts his own views of the marriage relation, 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 267 



in some of its aspects, and, through Mittler's inability 
to give any real assistance when it is most needed, 
Goethe exhibits the insufficiency of external media- 
tion for the solution of internal problems. 

The Assistant is a laborious, pains-taking teacher, 
who loves Ottilie, not with vehement passion, but 
with deep-seated regard, based on association and 
careful observation of her character. He thinks she 
would make an excellent teacher's wife. He can wait 
however, and does wait forever, without apparently 
being much the worse for it. He would undoubtedly 
have made Ottilie a good husband, but would hardly 
have satisfied any heart-hunger. His great gift is to 
talk well, and to treat in his conversation of men 
and human relations, particularly in reference to the 
cultivation of young people. He is absorbed in his 
vocation, and Goethe attributes to him many pro- 
found observations on teaching. 

The Young Architect, though a subordinate charac- 
ter in the incidents of the story, is placed by Solger 
"high above all; because while all the other persons 
of the novel show themselves loving and weak, he 
alone remains strong and free ; and the beauty of his 
nature consists not so much in this, that he does 
not fall into the errors of the other characters, but in 
this, that the poet has made him so noble that he 
cannot fall into them." Goethe, commenting on this, 
says to Eckermann, " that is really very fine " ; and 
Eckermann responds, "I have felt the importance 
and amiability of the Architect's character; but I 



268 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



never remarked that he was so very excellent, just 
because by his very nature he could not fall into those 
bewilderments of love." To which Goethe replies, 
" No wonder, for I myself never thought of it when I 
was creating him. Yet Solger is right ; this certainly 
is his character." So Goethe bears testimony to that 
unconscious element in the creative activity of the 
artist by which he "builded better than he knew." It 
is true, therefore, that it is much wiser to seek the 
content of the created work of art in the work itself, 
than to search the memoirs of the artist for his pur- 
pose, though that may have human interest also. It is 
the function of the Young Architect to restore. He 
has a great collection of imitations of and designs from 
old monuments and vases, and of outlines and figures 
traced from original ancient pictures. The character 
of the collection indicates that purity, reverence, tran- 
quillity, are the prominent characteristics of the col- 
lector. The fantastic and sentimental in art are not 
in accordance with his taste, but he delights in repro- 
ducing the placid, innocent, satisfied, pious happiness 
of the saints. In this spirit he restores the church 
and chapel ; but as he is only a dilettante in painting, 
he makes no attempt at originality, and he is so sus- 
ceptible to the influence of his companionship with 
Ottilie, that all the faces he paints resemble her. To 
him Ottilie is the saint ; in her the right thing is 
innate. His devotion is so deep and true, that one 
feels his love ought to have been requited. Certainly, 
of Ottilie's lovers he was far the most worthy of her 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



269 



love. But Solger's estimate of his nobility, which 
protects him from the errors of the other characters, 
seems justified. When his work is done, he departs, 
lingering to be sure till he forces himself away, feeling 
that he can endure his disappointment better at a 
distance; yet he goes with only a half-melancholy 
feeling, bravely resolving, one can believe, to conquer 
what cannot be satisfied. He returns to stand, "in 
the vigor of youth and grace, with his arms drooping 
and his hands clasped piteously together, motionless, 
with head and eye inclined over Ottilie's inanimate 
body," and to think of " the rare, sweet, lovely virtues 
whose peaceful workings the thirsty world had wel- 
comed, while it had them, with gladness and joy, and 
now was sorrowing for them with unavailing desire " ; 
but as he sees " his beautiful friend floating before 
him in the new life of a higher world," his tears cease 
flowing, his sorrow grows lighter, and, reverentially 
taking his leave of Ottilie, he rides away into the 
night, we hope, consoled. 

Luciana, the daughter of Charlotte and the excel- 
lent man whom she " respected, if she did not love," 
is a foil to Ottilie. Ottilie is modest, retiring, un- 
assuming, undemonstrative, considerate, and helpful. 
Luciana is bold, brilliant, superficial, pushing, utterly 
reckless of the feelings of others, utilizing all persons 
and things for the gratification of her caprices, born 
to command, but not to command gracefully. Wher- 
ever Luciana comes, she turns everything topsy-turvy ; 
yet notwithstanding the arbitrariness of her caprices, 



270 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



she has a certain skill for winning people to herself 
when she thinks it worth while, by making each 
believe himself the most favored by her ; and she has 
many admirers, even adorers. She has no success 
with the Young Architect, however. She is satirical, 
wilful, and thoroughly selfish, though with occasional 
capriciously benevolent impulses ; and her feelings 
toward Ottilie have a genuine bitterness. Luciana is 
an essentially unlovely and distasteful character, even 
though the Lady Superior regards her as a little di- 
vinity, and one wonders how the combination of Char- 
lotte and the excellent man produced such result ; yet 
Charlotte with a parent's hope believes that the dis- 
cipline of life may make her amiable and charming. 

Nanny interests us as enabling the author to ex- 
hibit the attractiveness of Ottilie in the relation of 
mistress and servant. Nanny is a wild, wayward, 
lively little village girl, who seems to have no capa- 
city for work at home, but devotes herself body and 
soul to Ottilie, and in her service is active, cheerful, 
never-tiring. Nanny's devotion does not always re- 
strain her covetousness and greediness; but she is 
driven distracted by the thought that she had killed 
her mistress by concealing the fact that, at Ottilie's 
command, she had eaten the food prepared for Ottilie, 
remembering with remorse that she had enjoyed the 
eating. The touch of Ottilie's lifeless hand worked 
a miracle in Nanny's soul, as well as on her broken 
body; for we find her, after, addressing the Young 
Architect in his sorrow with such truthfulness and 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 271 



power, such kindness and such confidence, as to aston- 
ish and comfort him. 

The Count and Baroness are distinctively " society 
people/' and while recognizing the validity of mar- 
riage, and respecting it in their own case as a social 
and legal requirement, they have no deep conviction 
of its rationality. Curiously enough, Goethe makes 
them instruments to separate the Captain from Char- 
lotte, and Ottilie from Edward, though the latter 
scheme does not work out as the Baroness intended. 

The Earl and his friend have only an episodical 
connection with the story ; but here, as always, the 
more carefully we examine the episode, the more 
thoroughly we feel its real artistic connection with 
the main work. 

We will next examine the events in which these 
characters are involved, confining ourselves, how- 
ever, for the sake of brevity, to the two principal 
threads. The story opens with a picture of domestic 
contentment. Charlotte and Edward, having been 
married a few months, have settled down to a coun- 
try life by themselves, in a beautiful home, with 
ample wealth, spending their days industriously in 
the improvement of the estate, and their evenings in 
pleasant conversation, writing, reading, playing duets 
for flute and piano, and arranging and completing 
Edward's old journal, — perfect domestic tranquillity. 
But even Adam and Eve, who had had no experi- 
ence of anything else, and had no social world over 



272 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



against them, found a garden life irksome ; while 
these persons have spent their } 7 outh at court, have 
been accustomed to gay society, have many ties which 
connect them with the social world, and are still in 
the prime of life. They have experienced also a 
youthful, mutual attachment ; each has made a mar- 
riage of convenience, and they have now united them- 
selves in a marriage of friendship. From what we 
have seen of the two characters, we know that Char- 
lotte could spend her life contentedly under her pres- 
ent circumstances, but that Edward will soon become 
discontented, will desire a change, and will be entirely 
carried away by the first strong passion which change 
of circumstances may give occasion to. This tranquil 
life is only the point of departure, therefore Goethe 
provides for its destruction in the very first chapter ; 
indeed, Edward has the invitation to the Captain in 
mind as he lays down his gardening tools in the 
opening paragraph. Edward proposes inviting their 
old friend the Captain to visit them. Charlotte op- 
poses to his excellent practical reasons for the change 
her feeling that the introduction of a third person 
will break up their scheme of life disastrously. She 
feels, what Edward does not, that a marriage of friend- 
ship is not secure, and is sure that the intervention 
of a third person is a matter of very great moment. 
However, she yields at last to Edward's vehemence 
and obstinacy, concealed by the warmth and sweetness 
with which he urges his scheme, and is even finally 
over-persuaded by him into solving her difficulty 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



273 



about Ottilie by sending for her as well. Edward's 
crowning argument is, that it would be selfish in 
them to decline to help those who have the closest 
claim upon their affection, lest some danger should 
come to themselves. And so the foundation is laid 
for the collisions of the story. We notice, however, 
that Edward does not intend any harm ; he has seen 
Ottilie, but has hardly noticed her, and wonders that 
Charlotte can think her particularly attractive. 

The limits of a single paper will not permit me to 
stay upon the details of the story. I must content 
myself with the slightest outline, assuming that you 
are already familiar with the details, or will become 
so if your interest is excited. The first part of the 
work is devoted to portraying with consummate art the 
rise and development of the passion of love between 
Edward and Ottilie, the Captain and Charlotte. Love 
scenes, of the ordinary English novel variety, are 
scarcely to be found at all in this novel. They are 
managed with great delicacy for the most part, and 
the growth of passion is indicated mainly by slight 
artistic touches, rather than by broad delineation. 
In each of the personages the sentiment takes form 
and is dealt with as the character of the individual 
determines. Edward begins to fall in love with Ot- 
tilie the first evening after her arrival, and yields 
himself wholly to his passion, with utter disregard of 
every other consideration; yet even he, as a lover, 
finds himself in his beloved, and can make sacrifices 
for her. Ottilie' s love is as pure and innocent as the 

18 



274 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



unfortunate circumstances will permit. She began 
to love Edward (Charlotte contriving to bring them 
together) before his marriage to Charlotte ; but Ed- 
ward, with characteristic obstinacy and singleness of 
view, was at that time so intent upon securing Char- 
lotte that he did not notice Ottilie. So it was his 
own wilfulness, not an external fate, which placed 
the insuperable barrier between them. Ottilie is 
persuaded by Edward that Charlotte desires a sepa- 
ration that she may marry the Captain, and, accus- 
tomed to rely upon the judgment of others, does not 
reflect farther, but allows her whole soul to become 
devoted to her love. Goethe says that, " led by the 
sense of her own innocence along the road to the 
happiness for which she longed, she only lived for 
Edward ; and, strengthened by her love for him in all 
good, more light and happy in her work for his sake, 
and more frank and open toward others, she found 
herself in a heaven upon earth." Our author very 
carefully preserves Ottilie from any wilful, deliberate 
transgression of the laws of God or man. 

Charlotte and the Captain are drawn together by 
similarity of tastes and occupation, and by mutual 
respect and esteem. Between them there is at no 
time violent passion, but only sincere regard. They 
co-operate in renunciation and separation, and each 
strives heartily to reinstate the divided family ; but 
Edward's headlong impetuosity renders all their efforts 
futile. He insists upon a separation from Charlotte, 
refuses to allow Ottilie to be sent away, abandons his 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 275 



home ; and when he learns that Charlotte is about to 
become a mother, instead of being recalled to duty 
and family, he is overcome by despair, joins the army, 
and, recklessly fighting, seeks to solve by death the 
difficulties of his situation, or to find in his escape an 
assurance that fate favors his love. Charlotte recov- 
ers her spirits and cheerfulness, and does all she can 
to help Ottilie, providing full employment for her, 
and advising her wisely and considerately. Ottilie 
enters as best she may into the various activities sug- 
gested by Charlotte, teaching the village girls, and 
superintending the house and gardens ; but does not 
succeed in overcoming her passion. " She had first 
found in Edward what life and happiness meant, and 
in her present position she feels an infinite and dreary 
chasm of which before she could have formed no con- 
ception." So, at the end of the first part of the story, 
all the tranquillity is destroyed, the family is divided, 
and the chief personages are out of true relation to 
each other and to the world. Goethe's universal pan- 
acea, activity and diversion, seems inadequate here. 
In the second part a solution is sought. We shall see 
how it is effected. 

We will pass over the discussion about burial- 
places, which would alone furnish suggestion for an 
entire essay, as well as also the restoration of the 
chapel, the social whirlpool stirred up by Luciana, 
and other very important episodes, which have not 
however essential bearing upon the principal content 
of the story. The evident devotion of the Young 



276 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Architect, the prudent desire of the Assistant, and 
the round of gay entertainments devised by Luciana, 
make no change in Ottilie's absorbing passion. The 
Assistant finds her, " in respect of a freer carriage, of 
an easier manner of speaking, of a higher insight into 
the things of the world, altered much for the better." 
But " it seemed to her as if nothing in the world were 
disconnected, so long as she thought of the one person 
whom she loved; and she could not conceive how, 
without him, anything could be connected at all." 
She is docile, and does her part everywhere, but with- 
out essential change. The child of Charlotte and 
Edward, the heir to the estate, is born, and Ottilie, 
devoting herself to it for Edward's sake, begins to 
realize the ethical requirements of the family. She 
sees how desirable and necessary it is that the child 
should grow up under the eyes of the father and 
mother, "and renew and strengthen the union between 
them." It becomes clear to her that her love, if it 
would perfect itself, must become wholly unselfish ; 
and there are moments in which she believes that she 
has already attained this elevation, and thinks herself 
able to resign Edward and never see him again, if she 
can only know that he is happy : " the one only deter- 
mination she forms for herself is never to belong to 
another." Charlotte has so far succeeded in her re- 
nunciation that she begins to plan the marriage of the 
Captain with Ottilie. So it seems as if the family 
were to triumph, and all were to be set right by the 
coming of the child upon the scene. 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 211 



But Edward, who has survived the perils of the 
war, reappears, and neither his own sense of duty nor 
the arguments of the Captain (now the Major) restrain 
him. He listens to what the Major says about his 
duty to his wife, to his family, to his own position, 
and to the world, but they are all naught to his love. 
He is still determined upon separation from Charlotte. 
He says fate has brought them into their present sit- 
uation, and the only solution is by a reconstruction of 
their relations. He will not quite promise to recon- 
sider, even if it can be shown that Ottilie can be 
happy without him ; but no other consideration will 
have any effect upon him. The most the Major can 
secure is a slight delay, and he is finally prevailed 
upon to assent to Edward's plan. Edward goes to 
Ottilie, tells her that the Major has undertaken to 
persuade Charlotte, and begs and implores her acqui- 
escence, but is met by a reference to the child, and 
a firm determination to abide Charlotte's decision, 
though he succeeds in getting fresh assurance of her 
love. 

Here interposes an accident which destroys all hope 
of solution by means of the child. Goethe makes 
the agitation produced in Ottilie by Edward's impet- 
uosity cause the child's death. Charlotte sees in this 
the determination of destiny, and consents to the sep- 
aration. She believes that the good of Edward and 
Ottilie requires the sacrifice at her hands. To the 
Major's urging of his own suit, she says, "Do not ask 
me now ! I will tell you another time. We have 



278 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



not deserved to be miserable ; but neither can we say 
we have deserved to be happy together." The Major 
and Edward are both inclined to regard the death of 
the child as " a convenient accident." Now, however, 
when all has conspired apparently to free Ottilie from 
restraint, she comes to full consciousness of her mis- 
take. She says, " I will never be Edward's wife. In 
a terrible manner God has opened my eyes to see the 
sin in which I was entangled. I will atone for it, and 
let no one think to move me from my purpose." 

But our personages are not to escape from their 
entanglement easily. Though Ottilie by her repent- 
ance and resolution feels herself freed from the bur- 
den of her fault and her misfortune, and has forgiven 
herself, yet the self-forgiveness is conditioned solely 
on the fullest renunciation persisted in for all time 
to come; and her own weakness, which she cannot 
wholly conquer, and Edward's pertinacity, make a 
tranquil life of renunciation impossible. Only the 
death of the lovers can bring peace. Ottilie deter- 
mines to return to the school, never willingly to see 
Edward again, and to devote herself to God; but 
Edward compels an interview and destroys her plans, 
though she remains firm in her renunciation, and sub- 
dues him by the saintly attitude which the Assistant 
noticed as so characteristic of her when she would 
not be further urged. She returns to the castle, as 
does Edward also. The Major too and Mittler come 
frequently. They endeavor to resume their old rela- 
tion outwardly, without bitterness or cross purposes, 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 279 



but with the new relations in some way taken up into 
it ; but Ottilie neither speaks nor eats, and gradually 
fades away, till Mittler's rude, though unintentional, 
portrayal of her sin against the bond of marriage 
destroys her life. Edward lived on mechanically; he 
seemed to have no tears left, and to be incapable of 
any further suffering ; his power of taking interest in 
what was going on diminished every day ; sometimes 
he would follow Ottilie's example, and neither speak 
nor eat; then his restlessness would overcome him, 
and he would desire to eat, and would begin to 
speak again; then he would bewail his inability to 
follow in Ottilie's footsteps, and say, " Genius is re- 
quired for everything, even for martyrdom, as well 
as the rest." 

At last they found him dead ; Charlotte feared that 
he had committed suicide, but the circumstances of 
his death prove that he died naturally. He died w 7 ith 
his memorials of Ottilie spread out before him, and, 
falling asleep " with his thoughts on one so saintly, 
might well be called blessed." Charlotte gives him 
his place by Ottilie's side. The novel concludes : 
" So lie the lovers, sleeping side by side. Peace hov- 
ers above their resting-place. Fair angel faces gaze 
down upon them from the vaulted ceiling, and what a 
happy moment that will be when one day they wake 
again together ! " 



This meagre sketch of the incidents omits innu- 
merable artistic touches with which the artist charms 



280 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the reader, and the limits of this essay forbid my 
calling attention to them. I have intended only to 
present what is necessary for a consideration of the 
ethical content of the work ; incidentally observing 
also how the characters ground the facts. It is evi- 
dent that the passion of Edward and Ottilie, and its 
collision with the family, are the main theme of the 
novel. Everything else is incidental thereto. The 
principal element of the content of this novel is 
therefore love, and more especially that love of man 
for woman, and woman for man, on which the family 
is founded. As it is the special function of art to 
excite in the beholder & feeling of the true, and as it 
accomplishes its purpose by reducing the true to a 
form which appeals to the feeling, it is evident that 
it will use spirit in its internality mainly on the side 
of sentiment. Love as the paramount sentiment in 
some form — as religious love, parental or filial love, 
or love in which the difference of sex is an important 
factor — is therefore a favorite element of the content 
of works of Eomantic Art. This is especially true 
of novels, so that it has been said that no novel could 
possibly be successful without at least one pair of 
lovers ; and the artist usually considers that number 
insufficient. Goethe in the " Elective Affinities " fur- 
nishes several pairs. 

In the devotion of one person to another of the 
opposite sex, the deepest thinkers have seen a mani- 
festation of the highest phase of love. The utter sur- 
render of self to find and know one's self for the first 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



281 



time in another manifests the infinity of personality. 
The infinite character of love appears in that the true 
lover exists only in his beloved. It is evident that 
the collisions, in real life, of a sentiment so absorb- 
ing, with domestic, civil, and political relations, and 
with itself as manifested in different individuals, with 
duty, honor, and fidelity, furnish abundant material 
for the imagination of the artist. Then there appear 
an indefinite variety of grades of manifestation of the 
sentiment, from the shallowest and most sensuous 
passionate desire to the highest and truest devotion, 
determined by the temperament and character of the 
lover. No two of the lovers in the " Elective Affini- 
ties" exhibit the passion in the same form. There 
is also an inherent imperfection in the sentiment 
itself, in that the loved object is a special individual. 
Baron Bunsen, dying, recognized and repudiated this 
limitation, when he said to his wife, " We shall meet 
again, for I have loved the eternal in you " ; but ordi- 
narily we love the special and particular. Hegel has 
expressed with his accustomed vigor and completeness 
the limitation of the special phase of love which is 
the principal element of the content of the work we 
are considering ; and he furnishes the key to the ethi- 
cal validity of Goethe's treatment of the situation, in 
the consideration of love, under the general heading 
of Chivalry in his " Aesthetik." 1 The obstinacy with 
which the lover insists that only the one particular 
individual he has selected can possibly meet the 

1 Hegel's Philosophy of Art, Bryant, p. 136 et seq. 



282 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

requirements of his nature, lays the foundation for 
distressing collisions. In this novel the principal col- 
lision is with the monogamic family which God and 
man have instituted as the fundamental secular insti- 
tution. The institution has its limitations. The true 
family should have for its foundation true love, and 
then no collision of the kind here portrayed would 
be possible ; but there are marriages of convenience, 
marriages of vanity and ambition, and marriages of 
friendship, and none of these are secure against love. 
Goethe has given us four instances of marriages of 
convenience ; namely, the first marriages of Charlotte 
and Edward, which were entered into at the solicita- 
tion of family and friends ; and (we may assume) the 
respective marriages of the Count and Baroness. 
The first two continued peacefully to their natural 
termination, not through any inherent validity, how- 
ever, but because no occasion for collision occurred. 
The second two were not so fortunate, but Goethe is 
careful of the legal bond. The Count and Baroness 
must wait, however unwillingly, till the death of the 
Countess sets the Count free. Luciana's marriage 
with the Baron is a marriage of vanity and ambition, 
and we can readily see that trouble between Luciana 
and the Baron is very sure to arise. The marriage 
of Charlotte and Edward is a marriage of friendship. 
Their early love was a mere childish affection, and 
the respect and esteem which had succeeded are not 
the ideal foundation of marriage. Hence it is not 
inartistic to present a collision between this marriage 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 283 



and true love, as it would have been had true love 
existed between Charlotte and Edward. 

In considering the validity of the " Elective Affini- 
ties " as a work of art, the question arises primarily, 
Ought the artist to have selected this particular col- 
lision as a theme ? If it is a truth of human expe- 
rience, that is surely some justification ; and Goethe 
says : " Indeed, there is not a line in the e Elective 
Affinities ' that is not taken from my own experience, 
and there is more in it than can be gathered by any 
one from a first reading. . . . No one can fail to rec- 
ognize in it a deep, passionate wound, which shrinks 
from being closed by healing, a heart which dreads 
to be cured. In it, as in a burial urn, I have de- 
posited, with deep emotion, many a sad experience. 
The 3d of October, 1809, set me free from the work, 
but the feeling it embodies can never quite depart 
from me." 

In a letter to Bettine he says : " The poet was, at 
the development of this sad fate, deeply moved. He 
has borne his share of pains ; chide him not, therefore, 
that he calls upon his friends for sympathy. Since 
so much which is sad dies, unmourned, the death of 
oblivion, the poet has here proposed to himself, in this 
one-fabled lot, as in a funeral urn, to collect the tears 
for much that has been neglected." But not all 
human experiences can properly be portrayed in a 
novel. I am inclined to think, however, that in these 
times, when the bond of marriage is lightly assumed 
and lightly broken, and the passion of love is the 



284 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

sport of children, a novel treating this collision ethi- 
cally is timely and desirable. 

A second question is, Does Goethe portray the col- 
lision from a true ethical standpoint ? The answers 
of different commentators to this question have dif- 
fered toto ccelo. Goethe says, "Not many pleasant 
remarks were vouchsafed me about that novel." The 
Encyclopaedia Britannica says, " In 1809 he finished 
the ' Elective Affinities/ a story which is always cited 
to prove the immoral tendency of his works." Bet- 
tine vehemently upbraids Goethe for not having done 
precisely what the accusers of the novel say that he 
has done ; namely, for not having made love the con- 
queror. In this country it has been considered suffi- 
cient to prove the immoral tendency of the " Elective 
Affinities," that a person prominently connected with 
social movements, accounted disreputable, should have 
been invited to write the Introduction to one of its 
editions. It has been taken for granted, that, if it 
could serve any purpose of such persons, it must neces- 
sarily be bad ; but the Introduction candidly admits 
that the work will furnish cold comfort for such as 
find the restraints of permanent marriage irksome, and 
that to such its conservatism will prove an unwelcome 
surprise. When one remembers that the advocates of 
slavery, polygamy, and drunkenness have long been 
accustomed to draw their strongest arguments from 
the Bible, the fact that persons alleged to be impure 
have commended the " Elective Affinities " is not al- 
together conclusive of its impurity. The work itself 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 285 



furnishes no warrant whatever for such conclusion. 
Much of the unintelligent, hostile criticism of the 
novel is really based on the assumption that Goethe's 
own life indicated a loose view of marriage, and that 
therefore the immoral construction of his work is the 
true one. But Goethe says, and with direct reference 
to this novel, " The late Eeinhard of Dresden said he 
often wondered that I had such severe principles with 
respect to marriage, while I was so tolerant in every- 
thing else." Those who have studied the novel in- 
telligently and deeply, — e. g. Solger, Eosenkranz, 
Diintzer, Herman Grimm, and Mrs. C. K. Sherman, — 
all these thorough students of the work find in it a 
profoundly moral content. Lewes, with a dispassion- 
ate and unpartisan liberality, agrees neither with those 
who find the novel moral, nor with those who find it 
immoral. He thinks all depends upon how you take 
it ; and this is superficially true. One may say that 
the final catastrophe results from the failure of the 
personages to respect the validity of love (Charlotte 
takes this view of the death of the child) ; or one may 
say that the error of falling in love with a person 
already married can only be atoned by death. 

The ethical content of the work is, in my view, 
this: the necessary subordination, in the sphere of 
real life, of subjective passion, even though pure and 
true, to the objective institution, even though not 
ideally perfect. Ottilie's love is innocent ; it had its 
beginning long before the interference of other claims ; 
it is as deep and true and perfect as the artist could 



286 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

make it ; and in itself considered, it is entitled to 
realization in marriage ; for 

" Love, in human wise to bless us, 
In a noble pair must be ; 
But divinely to possess us, 
It must form a precious Three" 

But, unfortunately for Ottilie, Edward's obstinacy has 
erected an impassable barrier here. If her love is 
valid against a marriage of friendship, his is not. He 
has no right to marry and unmarry at will. The 
interests of society, and therefore the true interests of 
the individual, demand permanence for the family. 
The fact that Charlotte does not love Edward, and that 
she would be willing to have the marriage dissolved, 
is not sufficient. It is not a question of subjective 
inclination. 

It being settled, then, that the existing marriage 
must not be violated, the effect upon the individuals 
concerned will depend upon their respective char- 
acters. The Captain and Charlotte easily restrain 
and renounce their passion. They are not made for 
love. Ottilie endeavors to renounce, sincerely and 
religiously strives to overcome, and perhaps would 
have succeeded so far as to live on heart-broken, 
but tranquil, if she could have had help, or even no 
hindrance, from Edward ; for though her whole being 
has gone into her love, she has strength of character 
and patience enough to wait, — for after all it is but 
waiting. Goethe says, " What a happy moment that 
will be when one day they wake again together J " 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 



287 



Death cancelled the marriage bond. It is in the 
sphere of real life, here in this world, that their love 
must be subordinated. External marriage, without 
true spiritual union, is only " till death do us part," — - 
so that Ottilie could look to the future with happy 
expectation. But how could she ever be happy with 
Edward ? He is so obstinate, yet so weak, — so self- 
ish, yet without self-control; but love is self-denying, 
not self-seeking, and perhaps Ottilie can make a true 
lover even of Edward. 

Eosenkranz thinks that the Fate element in this 
novel is of principal importance. He says, " The 
6 Elective Affinities ' represent to us a tragic fate." 
This statement is misleading, if understood to mean 
that the triumph of Fate over man is the main 
content of the work. Such interpretation would be 
correct, if this narrow span were all ; but to one who 
measures justly the capacity and endurance of the 
human spirit, Fate is a subordinate factor. It is 
evident from expressions in "Meister," that Goethe 
views the complications of Fate merely as obstacles 
which the true spirit must overcome. The Stranger 
says to Wilhelm : " The fabric of our life is formed 
of necessity and chance. The reason of man takes 
its station between them, and may rule them both ; 
it treats the necessary as the groundwork of its 
being ; the accidental it can direct, and guide, and 
employ for its own purposes; and only while this 
principle of reason stands firm and inexpugnable 
does man deserve to be named the god of this lower 



288 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



world. But woe to him who, from his youth, has 
used himself to search in necessity for something of 
arbitrary will, — to ascribe to chance a sort of reason, 
which it is a matter of religion to obey ! Is conduct 
like this aught else than. to renounce one's under- 
standing, and give unrestricted scope to one's inclina- 
tions ? " It seems as if Goethe might have had this 
passage in mind when he created the character of 
Edward, and the circumstances with which he has 
surrounded him. Whether we consider the outer 
fate of external events, or the inner fate of tempera- 
ment and natural disposition, both of which aspects 
of fate have full play in this novel, yet it is equally 
true of both that it is the business of the human 
spirit to overcome fate, and free itself from all deter- 
mination save the highest self-determination. 

The supposition that the influence of external fate 
is the principal content of the " Elective Affinities " 
contradicts Goethe's conception of the true method of 
a novel ; he makes Serlo and Wilhelm agree, " that 
in the novel some degree of scope may be allowed to 
Chance, but that it must always be led and guided 
by the sentiments of the personages; on the other 
hand, that Fate, which by means of outward, uncon- 
nected circumstances carries forward men, without 
their own concurrence, to an unforeseen catastrophe, 
can have place only in the drama ; that Chance may 
produce pathetic situations, but never tragic ones." 

The "Elective Affinities" teaches many valuable 
lessons as to the conduct of life. I select these : it 



THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES. 289 



teaches, that the elective affinity of love cannot be 
ignored, if one would marry happily ; that one must 
cure his spiritual diseases by the activity of his own 
soul, neither accusing Fate of his misfortunes, nor 
seeking relief in the mediation of accident ; but it 
teaches most explicitly of all, that man, as a rational 
being, may not yield, as a chemical element may, to 
a natural affinity, but must regard his duties and 
preserve inviolate the institutions of society, — dis- 
regarding them only at peril of his life. 



19 



290 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



X. 

CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY 
GOETHE. 

/ 

By Mrs. CAROLINE K. SHERMAN. 

Every great poem is of necessity an organic unity. 
Its parts, even to minute details, are dependent each 
on the other and subservient to the whole, as the 
whole in its turn is likewise subservient to each of 
its parts. The poet may claim to sing as the birds 
sing, admitting no other motive than the relief of his 
love-laden heart ; he may be conscious of no earnest 
moral purpose, no avowed intention of putting in 
rhyme things never yet attempted in prose or verse. 
Yet, if he be a genuine poet, his song freely expresses 
the dominant impulse, which gives the key-note, and 
all the variations but echo and re-echo the main idea. 
Goethe more than any other poet has disclaimed the 
charge of ultimate ends and final purposes in his 
writings, and still students of Goethe pore over his 
works, bent on finding the central unifying idea, its 
manifold form of expression, its artistic development, 
as also its deep moral significance. And with right 
they do this ; for the poet, whether working con- 
sciously or otherwise, in so far as he is a poet, works 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 291 

not from any whim or caprice, but according to the 
divine harmony within him, bringing the chaotic dis- 
order of the world of fact into forms of relation and 
beauty, reducing the distracted many to the Complete 
One, and finding in that One the harmonious All, 
an organic whole. 

Still, although recognizing, as we do, the vital 
unity of each of Goethe's masterpieces, the interde- 
pendence of all the parts, and their necessary relation 
to the whole, it is nevertheless altogether possible 
that many an episode may be thrown in, having no 
direct bearing on the whole ; that beauty here, as 
elsewhere, may be " its own excuse for being " ; and 
that one might as well ask why the blush was on the 
rose, or the tint on the peach, as to question the 
significance of the various phases of childhood por- 
trayed in Goethe's works. Yet as a Darwin finds 
utility even in the most delicate beauty, — finds that 
it renders an all-important service in the development 
of Better up to Best, so we see that Goethe quite as 
often passes from the beautiful by way of the true 
to the useful, as from the useful by way of the true 
to the beautiful, and that the Child Life which he de- 
lights to picture is no idle accessory, but has always 
a distinct bearing on the whole. 

It was but natural that the morning-red of Goe- 
the's own happy childhood should lend some color 
to these portraits. Here, as elsewhere, Goethe looked 
in his own heart and wrote. His childhood was, in 
many respects, an ideal one, — not extraordinary in 



292 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



any. abnormal sense : on the contrary, it was normal, 
as following the highest type, and reaching the flower 
and perfection of childhood. 

Beautiful in person, endowed with healthful physi- 
cal senses, the world of illusion was to him a veritable 
paradise of delights. He had a comprehensive mind, 
that grasped the things of sense, and easily discovered 
their order and relation. Prompted by that childish 
curiosity which later leads to rich scientific investi- 
gation, study was to the child Goethe but the open- 
ing of realm beyond realm of new discovery. On 
the moral side there was neither the hypersensitive 
conscience that belongs to the child of weak nerves, 
and whose fate is to die young, nor yet was there 
a rude indifference to the rights and privileges of 
others. A strongly affectionate nature and heart- 
felt sympathy for all about him, no doubt, had a con- 
trolling influence in a moral direction ; while, on the 
religious side, as a boy Goethe was full of awe and 
reverence for that Unseen Power, which he recog- 
nized, not only as the beneficent Creator and wise 
Preserver, but also as the awful Thunderer, the grim 
Destroyer, laying waste the earth by fire and flood. 
This Unseen Power, even at that early age, con- 
founded the boy's faith. He found it hard to recon- 
cile divine goodness with painful facts ; but here, as 
later in the problem of Faust, a healthful optimism 
prevailed, and the boy trusted, as the heart of child- 
hood will trust, that " somehow good will be the final 
goal of ill " ; and then, with that " familiar grasp of 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 293 



things divine " so becoming in the reverent child, he 
built an altar to his unknown God, hoping, since the 
great God did not deign to manifest himself in the 
flesh, that he might at least approach him with 
sacrificial offerings of beauty, and worship him by 
means of symbols. Here, too, we see that the sensu- 
ous child-poet was father of the man. From first to 
last, Goethe could approach the Infinite with no cold, 
formal abstractions. In beautiful, sensuous forms he 
must meet his divinity, make his confession, and 
breathe his aspirations. From the beautiful to the 
good, from the good to the beautiful, was Goethe's 
impulse, or, as Plato has it, " from fair forms to those 
still fairer, and so on up to the highest Good." This 
tendency in the child Goethe from the beautiful to 
the good was nothing individual, peculiar to himself. 
It is the natural tendency of every healthful child, 
and when parents and teachers will understand it 
there will be less need of arbitrary rules and dog- 
matic precepts. 

Goethe's surroundings as a child were favorable 
for a normal development. The inflexibility of the 
overwise father, sternly in earnest for the good of his 
children, was modified by the joyous sunny temper- 
ament of the mother. The father appealed to the 
head, the mother to the heart. If the father was 
sometimes over- persistent and inexorable in his de- 
mands, the little mother, as Goethe was pleased to 
call her, could charm away any ill effect by her glad 
presence. Not that the father was a hard taskmaster, 



294 



LIFE AND GEXIUS OF GOETHE. 



but lie had his own views of education, which to him 
were ideal, and in many respects were so ; only it is 
so hard sometimes to draw the dividing line between 
what is ideal and what is mere hobby. Goethe's 
father occasionally overstepped this boundary, which 
is pardonable, perhaps, when we remember how excel- 
lent his plans were in the main, and what a strong 
influence for good they exerted on the boy, — when 
we remember, too, that the ideal system of education, 
which Goethe unfolds in " Wilhelm Meister," existed 
in crude form in the brain of the elder Goethe. 

How happily Goethe remembered his childhood, — 
his free play in the world of sense, his first hints of 
self-consciousness, the gradual unfolding of ethical 
and spiritual powers, — he has narrated in the auto- 
biographical sketches, which he calls Truth and Poetry, 
and which by no means signify Truth and Fiction, 
but Truth and that kind of Poetry which, as Aristotle 
says, comes nearer to vital truth than history. What 
is given in detail in these sketches is again found in 
lines of exquisite poetry in the Prelude to " Faust," 
which find an echo in every heart that yet remembers 
its own glad spring-time : — 

1 1 Then give me back the years again 
When mine own spirit too was growing, 
"When my whole being was a vein 
Of native songs within me flowing ; 
Then slept the world in misty blue, 
Each bud the nascent wonder cherished, 
And all for me the flowerets grew 
That on each meadow richly flourished: 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 295 

Though I naught had, I had a treasure, 
The thirst for truth and in illusion pleasure. 
Give me the free, unshackled pinion, 
The height of joy, the depth of pain, 
Strong hate, and stronger love's dominion 3 
0, give me back my youth again! " 

The portraits of child life in Goethe's works that 
are most familiar are those of Felix and of Mignon in 
"Wilhelm Meister." This social romance, as we all 
know, represents the development of the individual 
as he passes through the various phases of social life, 
seeking not so much to contradict and subvert these 
social forms, as was the case with the aggressive Faust, 
but wisely to appropriate from them that which shall 
tend to his own advancement. Not revolution, but 
evolution, is Wilhelm Meisters motto. He finds no 
fault with the established order of things, — is no rad- 
ical reformer, who sees the world out of joint, and 
considers it his duty to set it right. He accepts his 
environment as it is, with the purpose of wringing from 
it that which is peculiarly his own, or that which will 
bring him into most harmonious relations with his 
conditions. We know through what various degrees 
of culture Wilheim Meister passed ; — the beneficial 
influence which commercial pursuits had upon him, 
leading him to recognize the value of material gain 
only so far as it was subservient to spiritual needs, 
and the influence of the dramatic profession, by which 
he was led from that which seems to that which is. 
Art showed him his own possibilities and at the same 



296 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



time his limitations. Through religion he recognized 
his position and relation to the universe. We know 
what an important part woman plays in the history 
of this development. At every stage of the process 
her power is manifest. She may attract, she may 
repel ; but either force, attraction or repulsion, has its 
weight and affects his course. 

It was specially fitting that in this novel, which 
deals with the development of the individual as such, 
woman should have had so active a part; for thus 
far in the world's history her influence has been 
chiefly with man as an individual. How great that 
power has been, Goethe is free to admit. If he has 
delineated women as they are, with their weak little- 
nesses and frivolities, he has also shown the divine 
power of woman and the moral order which reigns 
where woman reigns. " But;' says Goethe, " what in 
us women leave uncultivated, children cultivate when 
we retain them near us." Wilhelm passes through 
all the stages of apprenticeship ; yet not until he rec- 
ognizes and assumes the duties of a parent does his 
apprenticeship end. Now he is no longer an isolated 
individual, a mere learner, a passive recipient. He 
is bound by family ties, and is now conscious of his 
duties and privileges as a citizen. It is the child 
Felix, well named the Happy-One, who gives the 
finishing stroke to his apprenticeship. "Notwith- 
standing his experience of life, it seemed as if his ob- 
servation of this child was giving him his first clear 
insight into human nature. Both the theatre and the 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 297 

world appeared to him as a multitude of thrown dice, 
upon whose upper surface a higher or a lower number 
was marked, and which when added together make up 
a certain sum. But here in this child one single die 
was placed before him, upon whose several sides the 
value and worthlessness of human nature were plainly 
indicated." 

Felix, as we know, was the son of Wilhelm and 
Mariana. He is first introduced as a child of three 
years, bright as the sun. " His clear eyes and open 
countenance were shaded by the most beautiful golden 
locks, and his dark, delicate, and softly bending eye- 
brows adorned a forehead of glittering whiteness, while 
the ruddy hues of health glowed upon his cheeks." 
Goethe's ideal of healthy, happy childhood. At first 
the reader supposes him to be the child of the sickly 
sentimental Aurelia ; but when he called her mother 
without any tenderness of tone, we at once suspect that 
this healthful child of nature is not the offspring of 
the super-emotional woman. Goethe understood the 
laws of heredity too well for that. Felix bears a close 
resemblance to his father, in that he is docile and 
tractable, passive in a receptive sense, yet, like his 
father, active and ready to appropriate and assimilate 
that which is peculiarly his own. Felix is no saint. 
He has the faults of a child. He persists in drink- 
ing from the decanter, instead of using the glass, and 
preferred eating from the dish rather than from a plate. 
He slams the doors, or leaves them open. In other 
words, he is the winsome, attractive, natural child of 



298 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

the Kindergarten, rather than the morbidly good child 
of the Sunday-school book. His heart is tender and 
affectionate, but human rather than humane. When 
the cook cut up some pigeons, he struck at her ; but 
the favorable impression which this produced on his 
father was soon destroyed, when he saw him merci- 
lessly killing frogs and tearing butterflies' wings to 
pieces, — like the child of our acquaintance, who 
thought it cruelly wicked to kill robins, but all right 
to kill sparrows. Felix was also highly delighted 
when he could sit down in a corner with a book; 
saying with a serious face, "I must study this learned 
stuff/' though he was ignorant of his letters, and 
refused to learn them. 

Wisely directed, he will become the well-balanced 
man. The father sees this, and now the chief anxiety 
of the man, who had hitherto lived only for self-de- 
velopment, is the education of his boy, — his other 
Ego ; and yet almost the first observation which the 
father makes, an observation common to all parents, 
is that the child is educating him rather than he edu- 
cating the child. For the child's sake he values prop- 
erty, studies social politics and the various forms of 
public life. So completely now is his life controlled 
by the interests of the child, and pedagogics form so 
important a part of the Journeymanship, that it would 
seem almost as if the child's development, and not that 
of the father, were the central idea, — calling to mind 
the old insolvable problem, " Does the tree exist for 
the blossom, or the blossom for the tree ? " 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 299 

The harmonious culture of all the faculties is the 
father's aim for the child. To this end he follows as 
well as bends the natural inclination. Before giving 
instruction he waits for the child to ask, " What is 
it ? " or, as Jean Paul says, is cautious not to give the 
draught before the child has the thirst. 

With an enthusiasm worthy of Frederick Frobel 
he enters into the child's interests and sympathies, 
valuing symbolic culture and industrial training. So 
far as is possible, he places him in the midst of 
glad surroundings, well knowing that a happy envi- 
ronment is to a child what sunshine is to a plant 
Those good people whom he would have the child 
imitate must also be glad and happy, since children 
usually copy those individuals who seem to live 
most happily. He will have the child educated to 
live in the Now, and find its happiness in the way of 
culture rather than at some distant end. The happi- 
ness, however, which Goethe seeks for children, is not 
simply glad, sensuous animal existence. The child 
has within him the possibilities of rational and spir- 
itual being. He can attain complete development, 
actual happiness, only in the realization of these. 
Happiness for child or man is found only in moral 
freedom. Selfishness is the fate and fetter of the 
child, as well as of the adult. Each in his own way 
must work out the difficult problem from fate to free- 
dom. At every step, the child, as well as the father, 
is called upon to renounce. Never for the sake of 
renunciation, however. It must be the denial of self 
only for the higher profession of self. 



800 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



In the harmonious culture of all the varied powers 
of the child, Goethe emphasizes with special stress 
that which no one brings into the world, and yet 
that upon which depends everything through which a 
man becomes a man on every side, —Veneration. The 
child must reverence that which is above him, which 
is reflected and revealed at first in his parents, teach- 
ers, and superiors. He must reverence what is beneath 
him, — that which humbly ministers to his happiness 
and well-being, as also that which hurts or harms him ; 
for even this he must recognize as a force, which it 
well behooves him to treat with respect, and to which 
he must on many an occasion make terms of peace, 
and perhaps sacrificial offerings. He must also re- 
spect himself, not with vain pride and isolated ego- 
tism, but remembering that he too is one of many, — 
he, too, is a central point from which good can and 
ought to emanate. 

These three forms of reverence are one, and the one 
is three. There cannot be reverence for what is above 
us without lifting ourselves toward it and so increas- 
ing our self-respect ; and the humblest is so allied to 
the highest that in respecting the lowest one does rev- 
erence to the highest. Goethe had need to lay em- 
phasis on this one point of veneration, without which 
there can be no true culture. Without reverence for 
what is above him, the child may have self-assertion, 
but never self-respect. Without due regard for that 
which is beneath him, he will be at the tender mer- 
cies of Fate, and never arrive at the only true man- 
hood, which is self-possession, ethical freedom. 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 301 



Wilhelm Meister finds for Felix a school in which 
reverence holds as important a place as mathemat- 
ics, — a school in which all formal outward signs of 
courtesy and respect rest on deep moral and religious 
foundations. Men are wont to call this ideal school of 
Goethe Utopian and visionary, but the dream of one 
age becomes the possibility of the next. Our chil- 
dren's children may attend common schools where 
ethics, and even religion emancipated from dogmatism, 
will find place in the curriculum. 

While Felix is the glad, happy child, everywhere at 
home where there is earth, air, and sunshine, Mignon 
seems no child of earth, but a waif from that Paradiso 
which is all love, light, and harmony. Felix has 
native strength. He can make his way from fate to 
freedom, wrestling, conquering, or renouncing. This 
world is his element, and as child or man he will 
wring from it that which is best for him. But Mig- 
non is nowhere at home. A yearning, an irresistible 
longing, fills her heart. Her kingdom is not of this 
world. Hunt for it as much as she may, the home she 
seeks is laid down on no map. Goethe portrays her 
as a child of sunny Italy, the offspring of a most un- 
fortunate union, which a pitiless Fate cruelly brought 
about in the tenderest guise. Her father was a reli- 
gious enthusiast, given over to emotions half spiritual, 
half physical, which for a time exalted him to the 
seventh heaven and then cast him into an abyss of 
dejection and misery. Eescued from this unnatural 
condition by the power of love, he learns when it is 



302 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



too late that the object of his love is his own sister. 
With all the reckless frenzy incident to such a nature, 
he will hear nothing of renunciation. He looks upon 
social law as a violence to nature. In the madness of 
despair he demands that the heart should follow the 
impulse of unconscious nature rather than the cold 
formal rules of reason. He refuses to see that he is 
not living in the free world of his own thoughts, but 
in a state where laws and regulations are as unchanged 
as the principles of nature, because they are based 
upon nature. 

So we see that, while the religious element is the 
leading trait in his character, it is the form of religion 
for which he cares, and not its moral content. He 
will have the emotional part of religion, its ecstasies, 
its soul intoxications and sweet deliriums, but not its 
self-abnegations, and triumphs that come only of pain- 
ful conquests. Fate overtakes him, since he follows 
inclination rather than duty. He becomes a wretched 
wanderer, finding consolation for the gloomy vagaries 
of his brain only in his harp. The mother too was of 
a religious disposition. She never knew the character 
of her offence. By a pious fraud she was led to be- 
lieve that she had sinned against her spiritual nature 
in engaging herself to a priest. Her misery and re- 
pentance over this unwilling sin is greater even than 
her love for her child. Eeligious madness and enthu- 
siasm happily cheer her soul, and death brings a 
speedy release. 

These were the parents of Mignon. Deprived of 

4 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 303 



their care, she lived with a worthy family near the sea. 
" Soon she evinced the greatest fancy for climbing, 
and to imitate the difficult feats of the rope-dancer 
seemed to be a mere impulse of her nature. To do 
this more easily, she changed clothes with the boys 
who were her companions, and, although such conduct 
was considered unbecoming, it was permitted. Her 
love of wandering often led her far from home, and, 
though she often went astray and for long periods, she 
never failed eventually to return. She would then 
take her seat beneath the pillars of a portico before a 
large country mansion in the neighborhood, where she 
was allowed to remain as long as she pleased. She 
would rest upon the steps, or at times, running through 
the spacious hall, would linger among the statues." 
One day she continued absent. She was stolen by a 
band of strolling players, who knew her value as a 
rope-dancer. Eescued by Wilheim Meister from their 
brutal treatment, he became her protector. Her sin- 
gular nature as well as her origin is a mystery. She 
frequently remained quite silent for an entire day. 
Sometimes, however, she answered more readily, but 
in so strange a way that it left doubtful whether her 
peculiarity arose from shrewdness or ignorance of 
the language, as she generally expressed herself in 
broken German mingled with French and Italian, and 
yet in no language could she express herself with 
facility ; and the difficulty seemed to arise from her 
mode of thought rather than from any defect of speech. 
Notwithstanding her great wish to learn, her progress 



304 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



was slow and laborious. It was the same with her 
writing, — a task at which she toiled. It was only 
when she sang and touched the guitar that she ap- 
peared to have an organ which opened and displayed 
the emotion of her soul. 

It may be noted, in passing, that Goethe takes a 
generous pity on those quiet reticent natures who 
have little gift of language. He is sure to find for 
them some form of expression that will be a relief to 
the overburdened heart, and by means of which we 
may know the rich fulness of their nature. Ottilie, in 
the " Elective Affinities," is better understood through 
her diary, and Mignon, who lacks even the ordinary 
gift of language, finds free expression only in music. 
Goethe recognized the value of his own ready power 
of expression, and the words which he puts in the 
mouth of Tasso were no doubt his own sentiment : 

" Though in their mortal anguish men are dumb, 
To me a God hath given to tell my grief.'* 

"The force of Mignon' s ripening nature often ren- 
dered Wilhelm anxious and fearful. The warmth of 
her disposition toward him seemed to increase daily, 
and her whole being seemed agitated with a silent 
restlessness." That love which can brook no rival 
becomes with her an all-absorbing, though only half- 
conscious passion. This ungratified love preys on 
her frail body, and finally destroys it ; but not until 
Mignon has learned the one lesson which this great- 
est of novels teaches, — self-renunciation, which is 
no stoical abnegation, but the surrendering of the 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 305 



demonic, as Emerson calls it, for a celestial love. She 
becomes 

< < Faithful, but not fond, 
Bound for the just, but not beyond." 

Like Ottilie, she finds sweet consolation in useful 
activity and willing service. An unerring instinct 
leads her to comfort the old harper, whom she little 
dreams to be her own father. She teaches Felix to 
read, and whenever her heart feels any want she re- 
solves that Felix shall fill the void. More and more 
she seems to lose her hold upon earth. Dressed in long 
white attire, and sitting with Felix in her lap, she 
resembled a departed spirit, while the boy was life 
itself. It seemed as if heaven and earth were in one 
embrace. The death which soon follows is hardly 
death, but rather a glad transition, as if the yearning 
spirit had now found its native home. 

Goethe has thrown an indescribable charm about 
this mysterious child, whose deep and impenetrable 
nature scarcely allows us to conjecture its emotions. 
Nothing therein is plain and evident save her grate- 
ful love to her benefactor, and the vague weird notes 
of her music, which hint far more than they express. 
" Know'st thou the land ? " is the continuous refrain 
which she echoes and re-echoes. Her home-sick soul 
longs for its far-off home, and utters that cry which is 
the cry of every human soul far off from God, who 
is our home. 

As in the old Greek tragedies the chorus always 
gives the word of explanation, so in the chorus which 

20 



306 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



celebrates the obsequies of Mignon we have the sig- 
nificance of this mysterious child, whose being was 
love and harmony, but who could find no rest or sat- 
isfaction in the discordant world of sense. "Look 
forward with the eyes of the spirit/' says the chorus. 
" Let imagination awake, which bears Life, the fairest 
and highest, to a habitation beyond the stars." And 
again, " Children, hasten into life ! In the pure robe 
of beauty, may Love meet you with heavenly counte- 
nance and the garland of immortality." Wilhelm 
Meister is brought to realize that he is not only a 
social and moral being, and capable of development 
as such, but that he is also a religious being. In his 
own soul a voice echoes again and again, " Know'st 
thou the land ? " He may not be able to answer the 
question, satisfactorily. He certainly knows that he 
will find no answer in the world of sense, for it 
is laid down on no maps. He may try to avoid the 
question, but it will force itself upon him whether he 
will or not. It will appeal to him in Nature and in 
all the varied forms of Art, but most of all in music. 
For there is no speech or language which appeals so 
directly to the human soul as music. 

Music, when sensuous and coming of a lower strain, 
appeals to the lower nature with seductive power. 
It is all absorbing and sense-intoxicating. The vic- 
tim knows the raptures of ecstasy and the madness 
of despair. But when music appeals, not from sense 
to sense, but from soul to soul, it creates an unrest, a 
dissatisfaction with the things of sense, and leads the 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 307 



soul beyond these and beyond the limits of formal 
reason into the higher realms of insight and faith, — 
a faith that is beyond reason, not below it. 

Mignon had no language but music, and indeed 
needed none. Renouncing the mysterious seductions 
of sense, she rises 

" Higher far, 
Upward into the pure realm 

Where all form 
In one only form dissolves, " — 

where there is no thought of sex, 

" The angel choir 
Seek not to know of youth or maid," — 

where there is no seal of silence, and soul answers to 
soul in its own language. 

In the drama " Gotz with the Iron Hand," we 
have a picture of Karl, the only child of the great 
hero. This play is rather a series of pictures 
than a genuine drama. There is no central point 
about which the entire interest revolves, and the 
characters are interesting simply as portraits taken 
in various positions and placed in contrast with 
each other as light and shade. Gotz, the hero of 
the play, is a man and a hero after one's own heart. 
His very presence is a mighty force. He creates 
about him that enthusiasm of humanity which com- 
pels his adherents to follow him to death. Like 
many of the true knights of old, he goes about right- 
ing the wrong wherever he finds it. As an individual 
he is without fear or reproach. Like the other knights 



308 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



of the fifteenth century, he asserts his liberty and in- 
dependence, and this liberty, so far as it pertains to 
himself and his followers, is no selfish, licentious lib- 
erty. It is liberty to correct the wrong and enforce 
the right according to his own ideas, — the liberty of 
asserting his moral self. He has learned the mean- 
ing of i* in its most exalted sense, but he has not 
learned the meaning of You. A new era has dawned. 
Fraternity is now the word, as well as Liberty. The 
new era is irresistible, and Gotz tenaciously clinging 
to the relics of the past, obstinately resisting the 
progress of events, is overtaken by his fate ; for Na- 
ture punishes ignorance and narrow-mindedness as 
she punishes crimes. 

The calm, quiet picture of the meek little Karl 
might seem to have no connection with the bold ego- 
ism of Gotz, or with the leading idea that men can- 
not successfully wage war against the World-Histori- 
cal Spirit. We see Karl first as begging his aunt for 
the story of the Good Child. That he should ask for 
a story of a good child rather than of a bad one, is in- 
dicative of Karl's quiet, effeminate nature ; for most 
children prefer the story of the bad child, not because 
they themselves are bad, but because they like the 
tragic, and are sure that dramatic collision will hap- 
pen when the bad antagonizes the good. The aunt 
requires the boy to tell her the familiar story, and 
he is taught to repeat it with such literal exactness 
that the spirit is entirely lost in the verbiage. Later 
the father comes, and the joy and interest of the boy 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 809 

are manifested by going to the provision cellar with 
his aunt, rather than to the stable with the hostler. 

" He never will be his father," said the hostler, 
" else he would have gone with me to the stables." 

When he greets his father, he does not look upon 
him with proud admiration as a hero. He simply 
asks, " Have you brought me anything ? " Then he 
tells his father, " I have learned a great deal." 

" What may that be ? " asks the father. 

" Jaxthausen is a village and a castle on the Jaxt, 
which has appertained in property and heritage for 
two hundred years to the lords of Berlichingen." 

" Do you know the lords of Berlichingen ? " asks 
the father, who sees with contempt that the boy's 
learning is so abstruse that he does not know his 
own father. "To whom does Jaxthausen belong?" 

"Jaxthausen is a village and a castle upon the 
Jaxt—" 

" I did not ask that," returned the father. " I 
knew every path, pass, and ford about this place be- 
fore ever I knew the name of the village, castle, or 
river. Is your mother in the kitchen ? " 

" Yes, papa, they are cooking a lamb and turnips." 

" Do you know that too, Jack Turnspit ? " 

"And my aunt is roasting an apple for me." 

" Can't you eat it raw ? " 

"It tastes better roasted." 

And when he is introduced to Weislingen, the 
child says, " Be merry, dinner will soon be ready." 

" Happy boy ! " says Weislingen, " that knowest no 
worse evil than the delay of dinner." 



310 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



This picture of the placid, meek boy heightens by- 
contrast the heroic valor of his father. We have said 
that this play is rather a series of contrasting pictures 
than a genuine drama. Yet the little scene of Karl 
with his father has a closer bearing on the leading 
idea of the play than at first appears. As the father 
will not come into harmony with the spirit of the 
times, but clings persistently to a past that is dying 
or dead, so the son is carelessly indifferent to things 
and facts about him, and clings to far-off, meaning- 
less words. The son ignores the Here, as the father 
ignores the Now. 

Goethe's greatest drama offers little scope to chil- 
dren ; for, with the first kiss of Faust, Margaret is no 
longer a child, and Euphorion, the offspring of Faust 
and Helen, is more of an allegorical character than 
living flesh and blood. Yet in connection with the 
child Euphorion occurs a passage which without 
question emphasizes the high estimate that Goethe 
eventually placed upon the family relation, — 

" Love in human wise to bless us 
In a noble pair must be, 
But divinely to possess us, 

It must form a precious three," — 

and the child of this ideal union is significantly 
named Euphorion, " Bringer of Good." 

It is worthy of notice, that, when Goethe wishes to 
make a woman specially attractive, he surrounds her 
with beautiful children. "Nothing," said Goethe, "is 
more charming than to see a mother with a child upon 



CHILD LIFE AS PORTRAYED BY GOETHE. 311 

her arm." " Nothing is more revered than a mother 
among many children." Ottilie is never so beautiful 
as when holding Edward's child. Charlotte in the 
midst of her younger brothers and sisters is the finest 
of the many fine pictures in " Werther." Goethe is 
said to have borrowed this scene from Eousseau. 
He borrowed not so much from Eousseau as directly 
from nature. Because Eousseau had given an equally 
beautiful picture was no reason why Goethe should 
not repeat it. As Chaucer was accustomed to say 
that he took possession of whatever he found directed 
to G. Chaucer, so no great poet need hesitate over 
any material at hand, provided he is sure the divine 
spark is his own. 

Goethe not only develops the characters of his 
heroines by their contact with children, but he finds 
their relation to children the readiest way of describ- 
ing them. With a single stroke of his pen he draws 
the distinction between Theresa and Natalie when 
he says, "Theresa trains children, Natalie instructs 
them." While Goethe ornaments Ottilie, Charlotte, 
Natalie, and Mignon with children, his weak charac- 
ters, like the frivolous Philina and the super-senti- 
mental Aurelia, have no power to attract them, — 
indeed, children are repelled from them, — but eventu- 
ally, when Philina develops into a useful woman, 
worthy of the name, children are drawn to her. 

Goethe has clearly shown that, where women are 
denied the marriage which the heart prompts, their 
resort is not, as has been hinted, in marriage with 



312 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



another. According to Goethe, their happiness is 
then found in useful service, especially to children. 
This is manifestly the case with Ottilie and with 
Mignon. Not to be crushed with the agony of dis- 
appointment, and not to realize the full measure of 
desolation, they spend themselves in useful activity, 
the noblest form of which is the care and instruction 
of children ; and it may safely be said that nowhere 
has the realistic Goethe followed nature more closely 
than when he makes the instruction of children the 
happy alternative for those who are denied the perfect 
expression of love. 

Although the children portrayed by Goethe occupy, 
of necessity, a subordinate position, they fill, as we 
have seen, no insignificant parts. As an artist Goethe 
might have introduced them simply as ornaments, 
for Beauty's sake alone ; but although Goethe is pre- 
eminently an artist, he is none the less a rigid moralist 
and utilitarian of the strictest order. Everywhere in 
his works children serve a wise economy and earnest 
moral purpose, — developing the individual, as in 
" Meister," to a closer sympathy with humanity ; or 
compelling the individual for their sake to a more 
refined degree of Morality, as in the " Elective Affini- 
ties " ; or demanding of society as well as the individ- 
ual that renunciation which recognizes the claims of 
children as paramount to all other considerations, — 
a renunciation which, in its turn, leads to the higher 
advancement of society, as well as of the individual. 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 313 



XL 

HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 

By DENTON J. SNIDER. 

The connection between the composition of "Faust" 
and Goethe's own life has always been felt to be very 
intimate ; the two run parallel. " Faust " ushers in 
the spiritual life of the poet, and closes with his 
bodily life; the work, quiescent for long periods, 
always starts afresh, gathering and preserving the 
bloom of many rich poetical epochs. Every true 
reader wishes to see the poem unfolding out of the 
life of the poet, and also to behold each portion de- 
veloping out of the preceding portion, naturally and 
in due order. A history of the Faust poem, then, 
is the requirement ; which will be, not a mere record 
of external incidents and facts, but an inner, genetic 
history of the work in its double relation to the poet 
and itself. 

Critical opinion is divided concerning the point of 
time when Goethe first conceived and began to work 
upon his " Faust." The prevailing view has been 
that the beginning was made about the year 1772 
or 1773, when the poet was twenty-three years old. 
Says Loeper (Einleitung, p. 5) : " The day and hour 



314 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

cannot be exactly fixed when Goethe, in that most 
fruitful period of his life as regards dramatic con- 
ceptions, 1772-76, laid hold of the Faust fable." 
But Schroer, in the Introduction to his excellent 
commentary on the poem, has given good reasons 
for referring its beginning at least as far back as 
1769. This is also the date assigned by Eckermann 
and Eiemer, who are supposed to have had documents 
for making out the chronology of the poet's works 
now inaccessible. Two citations from Goethe's letters 
bearing on this point are worth translating. " It is 
no trifling matter to represent outside of one's self, 
in the eighty-second year, what one has conceived 
in his twentieth." (Letter to Zelter, June 1, 1831.) 
Goethe was twenty years old in 1769. Again, in a 
letter to Wilhelni von Humboldt, March 17, 1832, 
written five days before his death, he says : " It is 
over sixty years since the conception of ' Faust ' lay 
before me clear, but the succession of its parts less 
complete." 

The answer to these and similar passages is, that 
the old Goethe was inaccurate in his memory of the 
events of his youth. In a general way, however, 
it may be said that the conception of " Faust " goes 
back nearly forty years before the complete edition 
of the First Part, in 1808, and fully sixty years before 
the completion of the Second Part. Such is the first 
grand fact of the poem, a fact unique in literature ; 
in one long human life the work blossoms, unfolds, 
matures ; this life of the Poet is but his outer setting 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 315 



in Time, yet it deeply suggests the life of the legend 
developing through the centuries. 

In the history of the Faust legend we see how 
the fable of Faust has unfolded with the unfolding 
of the race, and bears in it the image of the ages. 
The true mythus is a growth, a never-ceasing devel- 
opment of an original germ, in which the people have 
put their own idea, and in this idea the spiritual 
march of the world mirrors itself; the legend grows 
with the growth of man, out of the same seedling, 
to the same altitude. Now Goethe the individual 
has to go through the same process to be the true 
singer ; the Faust legend in its primitive germ will 
sprout within him in early youth, will grow through 
life, and bear its last fruits in extreme old age. The 
poet truly lives the life of the legend which he em- 
bodies in writ; and under its form he has to pass 
through what his race has passed through. Before 
he can sing his task to completeness, he must live, 
in those sixty years of his, ideally sixty centuries of 
his people at least. In him the Faust legend is no 
artificial thing, picked up from the outside to make 
verses about, but it is the germinal dot of his being, 
which blooms afresh in one individual life, the life 
of the legend and the race. 

It is then, a matter of importance to trace back 
to Goethe's childhood the first faint impress of the 
legend stamped upon his susceptible soul. He had 
seen a puppet-play on the subject of Faust in Frank- 
fort when a boy, — probably had seen it often; then, 



816 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



we may suppose, the first vague possibility was 
planted in him. The puppet-play which he saw is 
not known, but it was probably derived from Mar- 
lowe's " Doctor Faustus," which, though its original 
source was the old Frankfort Faust-book of Spiess, 
had been brought back to Germany by strolling bands 
of English players, and had shaped the dramatic form 
of the Faust legend. Thus the great Elizabethan era 
of dramatic creation throws out a line of descent to 
the German poem of Goethe. Shakespeare, as we see 
from several allusions, was also aware of the Faust 
legend, which, however, had not yet been ripened for 
him by time ; hence, with true instinct, he chose, as 
his grand embodiment of the Teutonic mythus, the 
story of Hamlet the Dane, who is a first-cousin to 
German Faust, physically and spiritually, and, like 
Faust, was educated at the Protestant school of 
Wittenberg. 

Perhaps we can point out the very egg that Mar- 
lowe's drama laid in Goethe's poem, which will hatch 
it out to a bird of such wonderful plumage and pin- 
ion. In the soliloquy that begins his play, Marlowe 
introduces Faust as disgusted with all knowledge, and 
giving himself up to magic. This is the primitive 
germ of denial, not by any means carried out to its 
full development by Marlowe ; but Goethe will pick 
up the same germ in the first soliloquy of Faust, 
the form and substance of which are given by Mar- 
lowe, and let it unfold under the storm and sunshine 
of his whole life. The Faust of Marlowe is a Protes- 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 317 

tant Faust, tragic, the Devil gets him ; through the 
puppet-play the germinal negation of that Protestant 
Faust, protesting in it against all science and truth, 
drops into the youthful soul of Goethe, most fertile 
of all spiritual soils. Goethe himself has, perhaps 
unconsciously, told his own tale ; he has in his 
" Wilhelm Meister " unfolded the history of a germ 
laid in a child's soul by seeing a puppet-play ; thence 
the child gets a tendency or impulse which unfolds 
into its life, whose record is that novel. 

But a far mightier element was at work in the pe- 
riod, struggling, fermenting with some new change. 
There was a Faust spirit in the air of Germany, of all 
Europe, during Goethe's youth, and it was giving pre- 
monitions of the great impending Eevolution, social 
and political. A time kindred in many respects to 
the Eeformation awoke the sleeping Faust legend 
out of its peaceful century's slumber, and made it 
spring up with fresh life in all susceptible German 
hearts, particularly in those of the young poets. 
Several of Goethe's immediate circle of friends, Miil- 
ler, Klinger, Lenz, tried their hand at writing Fausts. 
The great literary protagonist of new Germany, Les- 
sing, had planned and partly written a Faust drama ; 
moreover, he had distinctly declared that the Faust 
legend offered a true theme for a great national 
poem. 

The restless spirit of the time, struggling, protest- 
ing, was loudly calling for its poet, when the young 
Goethe stepped forth from the nameless ranks of men 



318 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



with a response forever memorable. That first re- 
sponse was " Gotz " and " Werther," in which produc- 
tions the literary period of Germany known as " Storm 
and Stress " culminated in a vast tumultuous overflow 
of emotion, eternally self-generating and eternally self- 
destroying. The poet finished them in his Titanic 
vein ; they had of course to be tragic, indeed self-anni- 
hilating ; their end must be in the final conclusive pro- 
test against the world called death. Other poems, like 
" Prometheus " and " The Wandering Jew/' conceived 
in the same spirit, he could not finish ; in them the 
protest refuses to protest any longer, and the half- 
conscious thought seems to rise out of chaos and 
say : " Dear Poet, the problem in this world is not to 
die, but to live ; to master fate, not to yield thereto ; 
and it is thy function to reveal such mastery to mor- 
tal men. ,, 

In the same Titanic vein he conceived his Faust, 
whose disgust at knowledge he had himself experi- 
en ced, chiefly in his student life at the University of 
Leipzig, whereby he had learned, as he declares, the 
vanity of all human science, at the early age of eigh- 
teen. He wrote much upon his "Faust" at this 
stormy period, almost finished it as is supposed, yet 
did not. Why ? He could not ; he had run against a 
wall which barred all progress, and which rose higher 
with advancing years. He first felt the vague in- 
stinct, then came to the clear insight, that Faust must 
be redeemed, must pass out of his Titanic protest into 
reconciliation. This is the wall which stopped him 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 



319 



so many, many years, but which he will at last climb 
over, when he will reveal the Paradise within. Of 
" Werther " he says, that he freed himself, by writing 
it, of his own tragic sentimentality; he slaughtered 
the sentimental hero of his romance, and thereby saved 
himself ; through such vicarious offering of his shadow, 
he escaped the ghost-world. Clearly it will be his 
duty next time to save his hero as well as himself. 

No sooner had he looked into the depths of the 
Faust legend, and had struggled to embody it, than 
he discovered his inability. It was the truest instinct 
which led him to lay it aside, and to wait for the 
experience of life. He must grow into the legend 
as the legend itself grew. This became the method 
of his life, — to unfold into completeness ; it also be- 
came the method of his poem ; his own life gave the 
literary procedure. "Faust'' unfolds, step by step, 
not simply in the mind of its author, but also in its 
outer artistic form. Goethe had in his soul a vast 
germ, which could bloom and be fruitful only with 
time ; the poem, imaging the poet's process, starts 
with a vast germ laid in Faust's soul ; this germ is 
what develops through its own law into the existent 
work, a self-unfolding whole. 

In this sense of mirroring the poet's innermost 
spiritual development, the poem is a biography; 
hardly in any other sense. It does not give the 
events of Goethe's life, it does not give the rise of its 
own poetical parts in chronological order ; " Faust " 
was written backwards, forwards, and in between, at 



320 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

various times of life. It might be called an ideal 
biography recording in the highest form of art the su- 
preme moments of the supreme man of the age, which 
moments appear in the poem in succession, but really 
are the products of years of waiting and preparation. 
The mountain peaks, sunlit in the distance, we from 
the plain see in continuous line ; but there are valleys 
deep and broad between them. Still the method of 
the poem is that of a growth, as Goethe's life was a 
growth. Here the poem and the life fall together, in 
this deepest fact of spiritual unfolding. 

Not alone in life and art, but also in nature, Goe- 
the saw the same essential fact. Nature is a self- 
unfolding too; from a primitive form she develops 
into a variety of forms; the leaf in the vegetable 
kingdom is to become flower, fruit, and even tree. 
" The Metamorphosis of Plants," a treatise by the poet 
on botany, is a beautiful image of the Faust method, 
a very Faust drama of plant life, and indeed the pro- 
cess of Goethe's own development. The poem grew 
as the flower ; life, with its rain and sunshine, fos- 
tered it. Yet we must not think that, because it is 
life, it is not an idea; the idea is the very essence 
of life. 

In the history of the composition of the First Part 
of Faust, there are two distinct periods, which are 
marked by definite dates : these are the first period, 
ending with the edition of 1790, and the second pe- 
riod, ending with the edition of 1808. These two 
periods are the clear landmarks, most important for 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 321 



understanding the growth of the book, as well as the 
drift of the discussion upon it ; we shall try to state 
what was contributed to the work by each of these 
periods, shunning as far as possible the vast fog-world 
of conjecture which environs the poem to infinity. 

In 1790 Goethe gathered his Faust efforts of more 
than twenty years, and printed what he called " Faust, 
a Fragment," containing a little less than one half of 
the present First Part. In it, beside lesser omissions, 
were two great gaps, the first of which began with the 
second soliloquy of Faust, and extended to Mephisto's 
interview with the student, thus constituting the in- 
tellectual kernel of the poem, — altogether about 1,165 
lines in the original. Doubtless some portions of 
this large deficit had been already sketched, — as, for 
instance, the scene of the Easter festival ; but the 
whole was too fragmentary to be published even in 
this Fragment. It will be observed that the omitted 
section is in the main the unfolding of Mephisto. 
This deepest transformation of time and human expe- 
rience the young poet could not manage : it was the 
first wall that he ran against. Still he saw that the 
thing had to be managed ; the grand difficulty was, 
How ? Wait, patient man ! till the germ blossom 
and ripen ; wait, and the secret will be told thee in 
full. Hardly less significant is the second great 
gap, containing those last scenes in which Mephisto 
is subjected to Faust, and is made an instrument for 
the attempted rescue of Margaret, who, nigh to death, 
is lying in the triple prison of the law, of insanity, 

21 



322 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



and of her own conscience. The poet probably knew, 
in a vague way, that all this had to be done too ; but 
he could not get clear about the manner of doing it. 
With time, however, and valiant struggle, this last 
dark gap will be overarched with a perfect rainbow 
of poetry. 

Such were the two grand omissions, highly sig- 
nificant of the poet and his development. But that 
which was announced in the Fragment of 1790, and 
announced for all time, was the primitive denial of 
Faust and the fall of Margaret. These two phases, 
in their very statement, we feel to be connected by 
some secret thread; to raise this secret thread into 
clear daylight is the great poetic problem. The first 
soliloquy, which was then printed, gives the germ of 
the whole poem, the original dual forces from which 
it springs : negation on the one hand, aspiration on 
the other. Then takes place that prodigious leap to 
the scenes in which Mephisto appears a full-fledged 
active person in the world. What connection be- 
tween that first denial and this sudden fiend, with 
final outcome of his work in the fate of Margaret ? 
Such is the chasm over which the bridge is to be 
built, and the poet must live it into being. From 
that primal negation as the germ, Mephisto will un- 
fold ; and Faust, from the dry student and profes- 
sor, will be transformed into the youthful, passionate 
lover. 

In this Fragment we can observe two chief expe- 
riences, that of the university with its unsatisfactory 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 323 



knowledge, and that of a great breach in the Family ; 
both lay in the life of the young Goethe. But to 
show, step by step, how the Family is destroyed by 
that first negation, is the work of a far longer and 
deeper experience, which speaks of dire encounters 
with the Devil himself, whose genesis in this part 
is the supreme intellectual feat of the book. In 
the Fragment of 1790 we also find the "Witches' 
Kitchen/' written at Eome in 1787. This scene, in 
connection with " Auerbach's Cellar," introduces us 
to the Perverted World, the true realm of Mephisto, 
and furnishes the immediate motive for Margaret's 
fall. But this phase of the poem is not complete in 
the Fragment; the Perverted World is still to receive 
an addition in "Walpurgis Night." 

The reception given by the public to the Fragment 
of 1790 was by no means favorable ; it was not at 
all to be compared to the mighty outburst of enthu- 
siasm that hailed the appearance of " Werther." 
Goethe himself, in a half-humorous, half-complaining 
way, hints the lack of appreciation in the " Prologue 
on the Stage," prefixed first to the edition of 1808. 
Olympian Goethe, then, does want some recognition 
from mortals for his world-compelling work. A 
slight undertone of disappointment one may hear 
from him at this time, as he sadly strings his lyre ; 
but cheer up, mighty heart ! for no man knows 
better than thou, " What glitters is born for the mo- 
ment, what is genuine endures for all time." If the 
general public was cold toward the work, the criti- 



324 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



cism of the time was hardly better, and showed no 
appreciation of the significance of the poem. Indeed, 
when did it, or how can it ? Loeper has dug out for 
us some hints of its tendency which are interesting. 
It laid hold savagely of small external details ; it 
declared the language to be "dark, unintelligible," 
the usual charge of the ready critic against every- 
thing which he does not take in with his newspaper 
glance. It declared also, that the great master of 
German speech wrote bad German. Give us, 
critic ! some of your good German. And the style 
was not elegant, being written "in the tone of a 
street ballad-singer " ; many of its incidents and 
expressions were " such as only the lowest populace 
could take delight in." So it is. What of it ? Ima- 
gine a " Faust," or a " Hamlet," appearing to-day ; 
then imagine what the Press and Magazine would 
make of it. Such a lack of recognition is not a 
matter evitable in the present state of the human 
mind, — nay, not a matter regrettable, when truly 
looked into; it is the fiery discipline which tests 
the permanent value of the great book, as well as 
the literary grit of the author. The diurnal writ 
cannot possibly measure the eternal writ, which is 
incommensurable, — cannot have any sympathy with 
it or knowledge of it, — hence can only light the fires 
of depreciation. 

But under this ephemeral judgment another judg- 
ment, that of the eternal kind, was forming slowly 
but surely. Not till the great book takes posses- 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 325 

sion of great souls, and grows to be a living fibre 
of their spiritual being, has it reached the tribunal 
which is to adjudicate its rights ; then it will enter 
upon its true inheritance, and commence receiving 
even its canonization. After many years the mighti- 
est thinkers of philosophic Germany, Schelling and 
Hegel, begin to utter the ultimate decision upon 
this Fragment. The first German critical minds, 
the two Schlegels, also contribute their part in the 
mean time ; their school, the modern Eomantic, gives 
continuous help for its appreciation. The most sym- 
pathetic and deepest-seeing of all these early views 
is that of Schelling, which deserves special emphasis 
at this point. Schelling could have known only the 
first Fragment when he delivered his lectures on the 
" Method of Academic Study" at Jena and Wiirz- 
burg, 1802-5 ; yet he seems to divine, not merely 
the completed First Part, but the completed Second 
Part, in the final redemption and completion of the 
hero. The great philosopher turns a rapt seer in 
speaking of the poem, " which as yet must be grasped 
by anticipation rather than by knowledge," and he at 
once proclaims it to be " an original work in every 
respect, only to be compared with itself, and resting 
on itself." He sees far in advance that " the con- 
flict must be solved in a higher way," and that Faust, 
" elevated to higher spheres, will be completed," — the 
very vision of the end of the Second Part. It looks 
almost as if the poet had followed the prophecy of 
the philosopher, or that the latter somehow had got- 



326 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



ten a peep into the workshop of the poet. Moreover, 
Schelling feels the great scientific value of the book, 
" sufficient to rejuvenate science in this age"; he 
seems to feel that the development of the poem rests 
upon the same foundation as science itself, and ad- 
vises its study to all "who wish to penetrate into 
the true sanctuary of Nature." Yet this does not 
hinder it from being philosophic in the profound- 
est sense, and he declares that, "if any poem can be 
called philosophic, this predicate must be applied 
to Goethe's ' Faust ' alone." Thus the two extreme 
poles of the great poem are indicated : it has the 
true development of Nature, and the true idea of 
Philosophy, in harmony; moreover, it is poetic in 
the best sense, yet is philosophic also, revealing " a 
new kind of Fate," the Fate not merely of the Deed, 
but also of Knowledge. Thus the mighty twins, 
Poetry and Philosophy, eternally fighting and claw- 
ing one another in the brains of lesser critics and 
poets, unite in one grand symphonious strain before 
the mind of Schelling, as he casts his look upon 
Goethe's poetic creation. Such is the broad view 
of the German philosopher, — quite the universal 
view, spoken in a few far-glancing prophetic words 
toward the close of his lectures. Nothing better has 
been said or can be said upon the poem, and the 
interpreter has but to fill out in detail the vast out- 
lines of Schelling' s hints, avoiding the merely poetic, 
or merely philosophic, or merely scientific, or any 
other merely one-sided method of exposition. 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 327 

Hegel's profound appreciation of Faust is well 
known to his readers, but it has to be sought chiefly 
from books of his which were published after the 
completed Faust of 1808, and hence need not be cited 
in this connection. Still, in one of his early works, 
" The Phenomenology of Spirit," finished to the thun- 
der of the cannon at the battle of Jena, he gives a 
subtle interpretation of the Earth-Spirit in the He- 
gelian manner, showing that the fragment had pro- 
duced so strong an impression upon his thought, that 
he assigned it a place among the historic phases of 
consciousness. 

Many years have passed since the appearance of 
the Fragment in 1790 ; but clearly it is creating its 
world, and rearing its own readers. It has gone 
deeply into the great spirits of the time and found 
lodgment there ; assuredly they will take care of it, 
they will impart to it a share of their own immortal- 
ity. That which makes the great book immortal is 
that it lives in the highest souls, those truly immor- 
tal. With time it will be preserved against the mil- 
lions and the ravages of time. In this matter one 
feels always like speaking to the poet face to face, 
and addressing him out of the future centuries, not for 
his sake, as he hears it not, but for the sake of all 
toilsome unknown workers : — " Take heart, much- 
tried scribe of the ages ! be not cast down because the 
phantom of the populace buzzes neglectfully past 
thee ; it will long be dead when thou art living, nay, 
it will be chiefly known hereafter for not having 



328 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

known thee. Gird up thy loins anew ; a yet greater 
task is before thee, nothing less than to generate out 
of the soul of thy time the Devil lurking therein, and 
to reveal him in body to the sons of men. The 
greatest task laid upon human scribe is thine ; up, 
and be a-doing, courageous heart ! thou alone of the 
milliards of these later centuries canst perform it." 

Thus we may pass from the first period, embracing 
the Fragment of 1790 ; we now come to the second 
period of composition, which lies between the Frag- 
ment of 1790 and the completed First Part of 1808. 
In this period the two capital additions are the gen- 
esis of Mephisto, as Evil Principle, out of Faust's 
denial, and the beginning of his subjection to Faust 
in the attempted rescue of Margaret. The two great 
gaps which we noted in the Fragment are thus filled, 
and the poem in its First Part attains completeness 
after almost forty years of effort. These are doubtless 
the gaps of which Goethe repeatedly speaks in his 
correspondence with Schiller, and whose problem, 
though quiescent for long periods, never fully left him. 
The genetic hint, scarcely observable in the Fragment, 
has now unfolded into a conscious purpose, and the 
idea of final purification and restoration, vague and 
unclear in the Fragment, breaks forth into the full 
clearness of knowledge. 

The Perverted World, or Mephisto's realm, also 
receives its completion in the two scenes of "Wal- 
purgis Night." We saw in the Fragment the begin- 
ning and wild progress of this Perverted World in 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 329 

two other scenes, " Auerbach's Cellar " and " Witches' 
Kitchen"; now it is unfolded into correspondence 
with a total plan. To this period belong the two 
Prologues, in which the poet indicates a clear con- 
sciousness of the nature of his theme and of his work. 
Moreover, in the " Prologue in Heaven," the Lord 
definitely promises that he will lead the struggling 
Faust through to light, in which promise we have a 
glimpse beyond the First Part of " Faust " into the 
Second Part. 

The reception of the completed First Part was far 
more favorable than the reception of the Fragment 
had been. On all sides, there seems to have been a 
pretty general agreement as to the prodigious signifi- 
cance of the book. But the way had been prepared. 
The Fragment during eighteen years had been absorbed 
into many appreciative spirits, who were not only 
ready for, but had vaguely anticipated, the completed 
work. Moreover the scope of Goethe's other activi- 
ties, — scientific, poetic, literary, — as well as the 
unity of his genius in all these activities, had begun 
to dawn generally upon his countrymen. Still there 
seems to have been nothing like an adequate exposi- 
tion of it till ten years had passed, when Schubarth's 
book on " Faust" (1818) opens the long and ever-in- 
creasing list of commentaries, a list manifestly not 
to be closed by the present book. The criticism of 
" Faust " in Germany has been a prolific plant in 
fruitful soil, with many local turns and variations 
which no foreigner cares to follow. It has fluctuated 



330 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

with the spiritual tendencies of the German people, 
indicating plainly that the great poem always mirrors 
itself differently at different periods, and must have 
with the new epoch a new interpretation. The older 
phase of Faust criticism seems to occupy itself more 
with the thought or idea of the poem, though not 
neglecting philological, mythological, and other aids. 
This phase is properly the philosophic, receiving its 
light from the unparalleled sunburst of German Phi- 
losophy during the first quarter of the present century. 
The later phase of Faust criticism seems to concern 
itself more about the external unity, or rather the want 
of unity, in the poem ; its method is the historic, and 
shows the reaction against philosophy. Both these 
phases have their strong and weak sides, both supple- 
ment pretty well each other's defects. Let not the 
true-hearted student yield to the cry, that he should 
throw away the old, and take the new criticism, which 
is seriously inferior to the old, or philosophic, in depth 
of insight, while both need much correction in regard 
to sobriety of judgment. 

The recent criticism of the First Part of " Faust " 
turns chiefly upon the manner in which the two 
editions of 1790 and of 1808 are to be viewed. The 
one set of critics sees in the completed First Part a 
double and inconsistent plan, two contradictory ideas, 
held together only by the art of the bookbinder, and 
not by that of the poet. The additions made in 1808 
to the Fragment are, it is declared, really a different, 
nay, an antagonistic poem. Kuno Fischer, who may 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 331 



be taken as a representative man of this party, says 
that the two sections of the poem, that of 1790 and 
that of 1808, "proceed from tendencies fundamentally 
diverse ; they are in character wholly heterogeneous, 
and they are so to the extent of complete opposi- 
tion." Thus our First Part, over whose completion 
we shouted such a hallelujah of rejoicing, has by 
the completion really been made incomplete, and old 
Goethe has been caught playing on the public another 
of his tricks of mystification. Fischer goes on to 
state that there is a fundamental difference between 
the two editions in the conception of both Mephisto 
and Faust. In the Fragment of 1790 Mephisto is 
declared not to be the Devil, such as he is in the 
later work, but a mischievous imp, "an elementary 
ghost," in the service of the Earth-Spirit. In reply 
to this view, Oettingen {Vorlesungen uber Faust, 
Vol. I. p. 10) points out numerous passages in the 
Fragment which directly contravene Fischer's as- 
sumption, showing that Mephisto is regarded in them 
as the genuine Devil. Still, it cannot be denied that 
the Devil in lighter moods is fond of his impish joke, 
harmless enough ; witness the scene in " Auerbach's 
Cellar." But this milder phase may well consist 
with his deepest deviltry, Still further, Fischer 
states that there is a contradiction in the character 
of Faust : in the original conception he was a sort of 
Prometheus in conflict with the established rule of 
the Gods, a genuine world-stormer, and hence tragic ; 
but in the later, added part, the idea of purification 



332 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



through, struggle and suffering was introduced, with 
final reconciliation of the hero purged of Titanic 
denial. Again the answer has been made to this 
argument, that it really proves no inherent contra- 
diction, but rather the contrary ; Faust does begin as 
a world-storming Titan, but the whole course of the 
poem shows him cleansed of his Titanism, and com- 
ing into harmony with the world-order. Still it 
continues to be stubbornly maintained that the 
Fragment has the unity, and the total work has the 
split from top to bottom. 

It is perhaps characteristic of the intellectual Ger- 
many of to-day, that this theory of Faust — shaded, 
to be sure, in manifold colors, from hazy gray to jet- 
black — is held by the most considerable German 
critics of the present time, Julian Schmidt, Fried- 
rich Yischer, Karl Biedermann, etc. It finds its first 
germ in C. H. "Weisse's book (1837), one of the earlier 
interpretations of " Faust," but the theory there is not 
at all drawn out to its later consequences. A kind 
of cult of the fragment of 1790 seems to have arisen 
in Germany, intimated in the words of Gutzkow : 
" ' Faust ' as Fragment is much dearer to all of us, 
than the completed 'Faust.'" "Who are all of us? 
Certainly not the whole adoring the "Whole, but some 
fragment worshipping the Fragment. The true and 
final conclusion of the theory is boldly drawn by 
Gwinner and others, who maintain that the sole 
unity is the Fragment, and that the real fragment is 
the completed Part, while the completed two parts 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 



333 



of "Faust" are but the fragment of a fragment. The 
course of the poem runs thus : it begins perfect, grows 
to imperfection, and ends in a kind of self-annihila- 
tion, doubly discordant and dissevered. The poet, 
too, in the utter perversity of his nature, calls his 
complete work a fragment, and his fragment a com- 
plete Part, and his two fragments, doubly scattered, 
his complete work. Truly the saying of ancient 
Hesiocl, that the half is more than the entire thing, 
has now become a reality, nay, a twofold reality, for 
the fragment is the whole, and the whole is the frag- 
ment. 

In such manner certain sets of German critics 
seem to have turned the Faust poem upside down, 
and are attempting to read the book that way ; while 
Father Goethe himself is set on his head, and is 
asked to walk somehow with feet in the air. They 
call it the layer theory, inasmuch as " Faust " is not 
taken as a grand architectural work, but a series of 
stratified scenes, piled like stones one on top of an- 
other, which the critical mattock can pry apart and 
scale oft into pieces large and small. Of course the 
divisive process need not and will not stop at any 
given point short of infinity : if we can split the 
completed work into two or four portions, why not 
into a dozen, and so on, according to the endless di- 
visibility of matter ? Schroer has taken hold of the 
Margaret episode, the most closely connected part of 
all " Faust," in this spirit, and has divided it into two 
distinct portions, with still further subdivision into 



834 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



separate pictures, moving one after another in a sort 
of panoramic fashion. Upon which procedure one 
observation may be made : anatomy is absolutely 
necessary for all true critical, as well as physiological 
science ; but the whole purpose and end of it is, not 
to leave the scattered parts lying about at random, 
but to recombine them into the one complete living 
conception of the bodily or poetic organism. 

It is curious to observe that the discussion on 
" Faust " seems to be running parallel to that on 
another great poetical book, the first Literary Bible, 
old Homer. The unity of both is torn to shreds ; the 
notion of unity seems the reddest of red rags to the 
present infuriated critical bull, wildly laying about 
itself in Germany. It is bent desperately on fighting 
the fact, on proving by a violent toss of the horns that 
the fact is not the fact, but some other ghost. The 
unity of the Iliad was the prime fact of it, with few 
slight protests, ancient and modern, up to the time of 
Wolff, — the fact which gave it quite its chief worth, 
and which preserved it through so many centuries. 
Yet we have lived to see a German critic arrange the 
Iliad anew into a number of disparate songs, accord- 
ing to the principle of discord, and not of unity ; as if 
the supreme object of criticism were to turn all the 
harmonies of the earth back into chaos and old night. 
The next thing will be an edition of " Faust," not in 
the well-ordered unity in which the poet left it, but 
dislocated by the lever of the critic, and stratified anew 
according to his method of its origin. Tear down the 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 



335 



grand Gothic cathedral, pile up the stones in layers ; 
then we have the thing as it was originally, in the 
womb of Mother Earth, and our brilliant critical sa- 
gacity finds its true outcome in the realm of primeval 
disorder. 

Thus, however, has the critic furnished in himself 
the best commentary on the poem ; by his denial he 
has come to exemplify in his own person the denial 
of Faust ; he is transformed to a Faust denying Faust, 
through the very excess of study and shrewdness. It 
is indeed strange. One asks, What can the sceptical 
understanding not do? The world turns to haze, with- 
out solidity; the last book of the ages is getting to 
be as mythically uncertain as the first ; and Goethe, 
scarce fifty years in his grave, whom many hundreds 
of people now living have seen and remember, is be- 
ginning to be a fable, and to share already the fate of 
his eldest brother, the Chian bard. 

Such is the one line of Faust criticism, much main- 
tained in Germany ; yet even there it has valiant 
opponents, who meet the enemy at every point with 
huge stones and sharp javelins. This new school may 
be regarded as a necessary reaction against the ex- 
cesses of the philosophical school, which was too often 
inclined to build an air-palace of its own, with little 
foundation in the poem. It is, however, itself com- 
mitting excesses which foretell its doom ; Germany 
will weary of it, as she wearied of the earlier criticism, 
and will return to seek for the rational idea of the 
work, the idea which generates it, and is not foisted 



336 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



upon it. The facts which the great industry and 
microscopic acuteness of the new criticism have 
brought to light will not be lost, but will be united in 
a new and deeper synthesis with the thought of the 
poem. The only sound method is to accept the facts 
fully and sincerely, then to see them in their com- 
pleteness, which brings them into a connected, indeed 
creative whole. And the prime fact is, Goethe has 
left this "Faust" as a unity, arranged according to 
an idea, not by chance, or by mere chronological se- 
quence. This guiding idea which orders the poem 
must always be the main thing for the one who wishes 
to comprehend, and not merely enjoy, the work. 

Still, as Nature often reveals her secret in her mon- 
strosities, it is worth while to see the ground of this 
new layer theory. There is a difference between the 
part of "Faust" which appeared in 1790, and the 
added part which appeared in 1808. The difference 
exists, but the deeper fact is the unity which locks 
together these different parts. In the Fragment the 
problem is stated ; in the completed Faust it is solved. 
But many cannot see the solution ; many, too, believe 
that there is no solution ; these must prefer the Frag- 
ment. Such minds will always divide the First Part 
of "Faust" into two parts, and select their favorite: 
individual character and insight at last determine the 
choice. But the poet had certainly a different view, 
and if we wish to work in his spirit, we must follow 
the way he points, and grapple with the work till it 
yield its secret solvent thought. 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 337 

If the new criticism must prove unsatisfactory, nay, 
in its extreme tendency, repugnant, to those who wish 
to see the poem as Goethe saw it and left it, that same 
criticism has been very beneficial in turning a strong 
light upon the essential and most difficult fact in the 
work, namely, the genesis of Mephisto. It has com- 
pelled those of us who believe in the Faust poem 
rather than in the Faust fragment to look into , the 
great book anew, under a keener light, and to find 
the unity in a deeper sense than it has yet been 
found. I believe that the poem comes out of these 
critical fires more fully appreciated, seen in clearer, 
greater, truer outlines, than was possible without 
such discipline. 

The genesis of Mephisto, which lies between the 
first denial and the final compact, may be well called 
the grand central fact of the poem ; it was, however, 
the grand obstacle to the poet, — was that which lie 
had to wait for nearly forty years, from youth to the 
beginning of old age. What was his own development 
during that time in its cardinal points ? If we can 
bring them together in our glance, perhaps we may be 
able to see the spiritual history of the genesis afore- 
said, or some suggestion thereof. Out of what and 
into what did the poet have to pass, before he could 
write that wonderful evolution of the modern Devil ? 
As early as 1769, possibly earlier, he had in him the 
Denial of Faust seen in the first soliloquy; then or 
not long afterward he had the full-formed Mephisto 
in activity with the Student and with Margaret ; what 

22 



338 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



connection between the Denial and the Devil ? The 
young poet feels that the one is the source of the 
other, that the one must be generated out of the other ; 
but he possessed no literary form adequate for such a 
task, nor could he get it from any quarter, — with good 
reason, for the literature of the world as yet contained 
no such literary form. Genetic hints do indeed occur 
in Shakespeare, even in old Homer; but they are 
sudden flashes, prophecies of the coming form, by no 
means developed into an explicit procedure. Goethe 
then not merely must have the new thought, but must 
find the new form ; he has to live it into being along 
with his life. This creation of a new literary form is 
what makes " Faust " an original poem, and its appear- 
ance an epoch in the world's literature. 

Such was the difficulty which rose up against the 
continuation of Faust ; yet the same difficulty lies in 
the entire period of Goethe's early poetic activity, 
that period usually called his Titanism. He began 
a " Prometheus," the world's accepted type of Titanic 
struggle, but he never could finish it ; he ran against 
the obstacle which stopped his " Faust." Two other 
works, "Mahomet" and "The Wandering Jew," con- 
ceived in the same spirit, had to remain fragments 
for the same reason. He began a novel, " Wilhelm 
Meister"; but, with all the external incitement of 
friends, he could not bring it to an end, because the 
end lay not in him. He broke with his Titanism, 
saw that it would bring nothing to a close but itself ; 
still, like the huge boulders of some mighty primi- 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 339 

tive energy, the fragments of these early efforts lie 
scattered through several portions of his works. TI13 
fine poem called " Ilmenau " (1783) indicates the tran- 
sition; it shows the break with the past, with the 
period of "Storm and Stress," and also hints the 
unsettled state of the future. 

Still the poet was growing, growing into this very 
genetic method. He had begun to study science in 
his way, to take long deep glances into Nature, the 
first and last of his teachers. He discovered the inter- 
maxillary bone in man, not by scientific induction so 
much as by poetic intuition, — that vision which be- 
holds, not the particular thing or fact in isolation, but 
the total creative process, of which this is but a link. 
The glance which sees in the particular thing or fact 
the entire cycle of Nature — sees in the single bone 
the whole skeleton of the one animal and of all ani- 
mals — is Goethe's glance, penetrating the genetic 
procedure of the physical world, and hinting from 
afar a kindred literary procedure. 

But this last stage has not yet arrived, — indeed, 
cannot yet arrive ; he makes the transition into Art 
by a new mighty experience. This is the journey to 
Italy, the most important epoch of his life, falling 
almost midway between his birth and death, when 
he was old enough to understand fully the lesson 
of the past world, young enough still to be moulded 
by that lesson. At once the fermentation began to 
settle, the soul to purify itself, and he reached a new 
harmonious insight into the world-order, and into the 



340 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

expression thereof; he became a new man, looking 
upon a new world ; all that had been impeded and 
was incomplete in his life and works now began to 
move toward freedom and completeness. The influ- 
ence was a new birth of the whole man : Nature, 
Life, Art, Poetry, all felt the fresh creative breath of 
that Italian spring. 

First, the vegetable world revealed itself to him in 
Italy, he says, in a garden at Palermo, where he fully 
saw that wonderful metamorphosis in which the leaf 
generates itself, and in that genetic process purifies 
itself more and more into higher forms, till at last it 
completes itself in the total plant. That little book, 
called " The Metamorphosis of Plants," written after 
his return from Italy, showing all the stages of the 
genesis of the plant from the leaf, is still Nature's 
grand suggestion of the genesis of Mephisto, and re- 
mains to this day the best guide to a true insight 
into the genesis of " Faust," — the book itself being 
a poem, a genetic drama of the plant. In like man- 
ner he showed the metamorphosis of the vertebral 
into the cranial bones, and carried the genesis of forms 
through the animal world. A great, many-sided ac- 
tivity he unfolded, yet with one thought at bottom ; 
that thought was genesis, which became his conscious 
principle; he saw it everywhere in Nature, looked 
for it in Art, and in the history of Art, and intended 
to apply it universally in his great work on Man 
and Nature, of which, however, but a few outlines 
remain. 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 341 

Already in Italy this spiritual metamorphosis be- 
gan to pass into the literary works which he took 
with him to that country. " Iphigenie " from a prose 
drama was transformed into an ideal example of 
classic beauty, — a veritable symbol of Goethe's own 
transformation under Italian skies. "Tasso" was 
also transformed and rewritten in the same classic 
spirit and measure. A new world had indeed dawned 
upon him ; or it was rather the transfiguration of the 
old world into a new existence. 

Of necessity he began to employ his new insight in 
a higher realm, that of spiritual production, of which 
the first great literary fruit after his return was the 
completion of " Meister's Apprenticeship." We have 
seen how that work lay unfinished before the Italian 
journey ; no completeness was possible in it then, as 
there was no completeness in the author. But now 
he sees the way, he will remodel the whole work, and 
bring it to an end; Meister too is to reveal the genetic 
hint, and carry it over into the novel, and therewith 
into the spiritual world, out of Nature, even into edu- 
cation. It is, indeed, the principle of human life and 
character ; the erring man is to be seen going through 
his process of self-purification, of self-correction of 
errors, the grand human discipline in the mastery of 
fate. " In every endowment lies the force to bring it 
to perfection," says the Abb£, who is the almost in- 
visible Jupiter Olympius, hovering over this truly 
modern epic. The nature of Meister unfolds through 
manifold errors into its true being ; in him we watch 



342 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the genesis of a human soul out of its primordial 
germ into reality. 

With the completion of the apprenticeship of Meis- 
ter, the grand obstacle which stopped Goethe so many- 
years was broken down; he had entered the para- 
dise of supreme poetic creation. The great literary 
deed was done, yet not completely done ; a liter- 
ary expression had been found for one phase of the 
new idea applied to life ; but there was still another 
phase, stronger, deeper, more universal. In Meister 
the function of error in the grand human discipline is 
told, turned over and over, and emphasized in a thou- 
sand varied forms ; but now error is to deepen into 
denial, the unconscious mistake is to become conscious 
negation, — in fine, is to become the Devil. There- 
with rises the new task, vaster, more desperate, more 
soul-cleaving ; a gigantic task, which the poor mortal 
may well shun, - — to call up and put into body the 
" spirit that denies," the modern Destroyer. The 
negation of Truth, the intensified embodiment of all 
error, wandering, waywardness, the conscious Denial 
burning with a sulphurous torch, indeed, the very 
Devil, is now to unfold before our eyes into a reality, 
and to accompany the man through his long earthly 
career, till he work himself free of his diabolic coun- 
terpart, purify himself, and ascend to heaven. 

The task has to be done : there is no escape of the 
true poet from his call. Scarcely had he finished 
<c Meister," when the mightier problem seized hold of 
him, the final ground and mystery of all creation, the 



HISTORY OF THE FAUST POEM. 343 

genesis of evil. Yet this problem, so new, was never- 
theless his oldest poetic task, had indeed lurked un- 
derneath all his activity since his twentieth year, had 
sent him to Nature for lessons, had driven him to Italy 
for expression and clarification, had made him write 
"Meister" for training; this Faust question is really 
the spiritual substrate of Goethe's entire productivity, 
the mother soil out of which shoot up all his works 
and his life. In 1797-98 the Prologues were written, 
in which we see him deep in his work ; and we catch, 
from his correspondence with Schiller, faint indica- 
tions that the embryonic Mephisto was lustily strug- 
gling within him. 

But it is not a matter which can be despatched with 
a few rapid pen-strokes. Still a ten years' struggle, 
valiant man ! awaits thee ; untold birth-throes will 
wrench thy being till thou be delivered of Satan, who 
will himself, " the old hell-lynx," be made to sweat 
roundly in the process (ihr halt mich weidlich schwit- 
zen machen). Let no lack of man's recognition put 
down the God who now commands the work ; rouse 
thyself anew ; the years of long preparation are past ; 
the hair on thy temples has turned gray since the first 
early conception of thy task, but it lives in thee still ; 
thou hast travelled all the realms of Nature, Life, Art, 
in thy toilsome apprenticeship, and written its record ; 
but now it is done. Thy supreme effort must be 
made, thy genius is invoking thee to exorcise the 
Devil out of thy " Faust," and out of thyself into the 
world, and by thy magic speech to ban him into writ, 



344 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



there to stay forever. Then thou art free, but not till 
more than eighty years have passed over thy head, 
and the last line be set down ; then thou mayst dis- 
miss thyself from thy terrestrial task, and say to 
thine Ariel, "Now to the elements." 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



345 



XII. 

GOETHE'S WOMEN. 

r 

By Mrs. JULIA WAED HOWE. 

The topic here set down to my name was assigned 
me months ago, and appeared at the time one most 
congenial to my wishes. Goethe's women ! how 
charming to renew my acquaintance with them ! 
What a lovely literary pleasure to take up the 
magical volumes, and to go again through the va- 
ried narratives in which they play their part ! Vain 
thought ! I had my Goethe-time long ago, when as 
a girl I read " Faust," " Gotz von Berlichingen," and 
others of the plays, and when, a young mother, I 
quieted a baby with one hand, while the other turned 
over the pages of "Wilhelm Meister;" and so my 
Goethe Gallery is seen through a long vista of years. 
I, too, who once adored the Teuton rule, do so no 
longer. Heaven forbid that my grandchildren should 
be fed upon the tonic of " blood and iron " ! Give 
me American rule, American training, with its lapses 
even and its faults. For, though Germany did won- 
derfully take the lead in critical thought during the 
first half of this century, when the moment came for 



346 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

liberal action, she shrank away, and lost the world's 
leadership, and will never regain it. And how did 
her Nemesis, Bismarck, obtain the mastery over her 
daring thought and unrepentant speculation? Let 
me grimly parody, in reply, a line of Eobert Brown- 
ing:— 

" Just for a handful of silver he had us ; 
Just for a ribbon to stick on our coat." 

Having said thus much, and refusing to bow to a 
cocked hat, even if worn by a German Prince and set 
up by a German Emperor, I will look back at the 
social and literary glories which once illuminated 
two hemispheres from the narrow heaven of a small 
German principality. 

Coming, at so late a date, into this Goethe sym- 
posium, I must fear more than ever to touch upon 
ground already occupied by those who have preceded 
me. One who speaks of Goethe's Women must 
needs speak of the man Goethe, of " Faust," of " Wil- 
helm Meister," and of much besides. And I avail 
myself of the title of the theme given me to speak, 
not only of the women whom Goethe has brought 
into the world of literature, but also of those who 
were known and prized by him. From the living 
gallery of his friends to the marble gallery of his 
fancies, we may step in true progress. Or might I 
rather say, that we may find the beautiful forms 
of his imagination to be as like to those cherished 
in his affections, as the trees on the bank are to the 
trees in the river, — only that, like the clear stream, 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



347 



the master's mind adds to their beauties a glory of 
its own ? 

The real women in the first place, and the Mother 
first of all, — characterized by that substantial value 
which belongs to a class that neither cringes nor 
aspires. We must thank the Germans for many 
words ; and may go into their language to help our 
own, just as a child may go into its grandmother's 
store-closet to commit a theft which his mother 
would not leave unpunished. The word I have in 
mind at this time is burgerlich, which, taken strictly, 
corresponds to bourgeois in French, and to "upper- 
middle-class " in English. The German term, how- 
ever, seems to make a stand for itself. The French 
bourgeois has a little sarcastic tang, which Moliere 
gave it. " Upper-middle-class " is rather hopelessly 
suggestive of caste and confusion. But burgerlich, 
burgher/ife, brings to our mind those substantial 
medisevals who were rich enough to afford a velvet 
doublet and a gold chain, — who could lend the 
Court money, but who would not borrow manners 
from it. So Goethe's mother was burgerliche, al- 
though beloved of princes, not only for her son's, 
but for her own sake ; with great manners and her 
gold snuff-box for great days, but with a simple and 
genuine love of life, its real duties and real values. 
How naive and kindly is her anxiety that the cakes 
to be served at her funeral shall be rich and good 
enough for the occasion ! She does not appreciate 
the Frau von Stael, and Goethe did not either. Yet 



348 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



she is a woman poetical in sentiment and rich in 
feeling. 

The sister, Cornelia, the dear companion of Goethe's 
youth, the confidante of his first literary schemes and 
aspirations, was a young girl w T hose plainness of per- 
son made her self-distrustful, but whose character, 
to those capable of divining it, revealed an inner 
beauty to which the outer charm would have seemed 
superfluous. 

The lady-loves, so numerous, — often succeeding 
each other without an interval between the old 
love and the new, — how worthy do they for the 
most part appear in what is known of them ! Each 
has her individual charm. The first, Frederika 
Brion, is a blooming rustic. The second, Lotte, is 
a girl in higher position, gay and sedate by turns, 
the betrothed of Goethe's friend, who bitterly resents 
the portraiture of both given to the world in " Wer- 
ther." The third, fourth, and fifth, Anna, Sibylla, 
and Maximiliane, are less known to us. The sixth, 
Lili, is a city belle, the daughter of a wealthy banker, 
and something of a coquette. She was the inspirer 
of some of the poet's best-known lyrics, such as, 

" Heart, my heart, what is this feeling 
That doth weigh on me so sore ? " 

Of her inspiring, too, was the poem entitled "Lili's 
Menagerie," in which, says Lewes, " he expresses his 
surly disgust at the familiar faces which surround 
her," — the Bear of the menagerie being a portrait of 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



349 



himself. Goethe follows her about to scenes of un- 
congenial gayety, in braided coat, gazing at her " amid 
the glare of chandeliers." In his conversations with 
Eckermann, he calls her his first, last, and only love, 
all others in comparison deserving only to be classed 
as inclinations. When he says of this affection, " It 
has influenced my style/' he pays her the utmost 
tribute that a literary man can offer to a woman. 
He loves, but marries not. The first attractions find 
him precocious in feeling, and mature enough in 
judgment to distrust himself. It costs him bitter 
tears to forsake his sweethearts. We can imagine that 
the tears shed by them must have been more bitter, 
and cannot put out of sight the disadvantage suffered 
by these young girls, when, after every appearance of 
serious intention, the brilliant youth flits from them, 
and leaves them in (to say the least) awkward isola- 
tion. The fact that he did so leave them reminds 
me of a humorous device in Offenbach's " Orphee aux 
Enfers." Jupiter, wishing to make love to Pluto's 
fair bride, descends in the form of a monstrous but- 
terfly, and presently hands forward his card, saying, 
"Je suis le Baron de Jupiter." The great Goethe, 
on the contrary, comes like a lord and departs like a 
butterfly. 

In the judgments which this unedifying course has 
drawn upon him, Goethe is often blamed as though 
he had been throughout a free and voluntary agent. 
This is not a fair reading of the matter. Goethe in 
his youth was subject to all the complications which 



350 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

result from the conflict between temperament and 
those " circumstances over which we have no control," 
that would seem to be a convenient invention of 
modern times. The wishes of his parents — strong 
and determined people — would naturally be present 
to his mind in anything of so much moment as a 
matrimonial alliance. From Frederika he seems to 
have been parted by a sense of the unfitness of the 
relation, — responding to the remonstrances of his 
friend Merck. With Lili he exchanged the kiss of 
betrothal, and soon after, at the instance especially 
of his sister, thought better of it, and never saw her 
more until the heads of both were gray. But now 
he goes to Court, and beholds the great ladies of the 
day. One of these, the Frau von Stein, becomes his 
Muse, and for ten years holds him in her vassalage. 
The relation between them, though an intimate one, 
seems to have escaped scandal ; Frau von Stein hav- 
ing held a position of much respect in the society of 
the day, and having no doubt preserved through all 
excitements the strictest sense of the convenances, 
and of the penalty of their violation. The Frau von 
Stein is known to have been intellectual in her 
tastes and elegant in her accomplishments. For 
the length of time already mentioned she remained 
a guiding luminary in Goethe's heaven, the con- 
fidante of his thoughts, his sentiments, and his 
literary projects. 

In his fortieth year, he met the woman who was 
destined to be the mother of his only child, and the 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



351 



companion of his later years. This was Christiane 
Vv Ipius, a woman of poor descent, inheriting from an 
unworthy father only the curse of a morbid appetite 
for intoxicating liquors. Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, 
finds much to say in explanation of a course of con- 
duct which cost the great Master much of his social 
prestige, and robbed him forever of the friendship 
of Frau von Stein. "Christiane had/' says Lewes, 
"quick mother-wit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, 
and great aptitude for domestic duties." Madame 
Schopenhauer describes her as endowed with "golden 
brown locks, laughing eyes, kiss-provoking lips, a 
small and gracefully rounded figure," and likens her 
in appearance to a youthful Bacchus. The "Eo- 
man Elegies " record Goethe's feeling for her, while 
the fact that he partly wrote for her his invaluable 
" Metamorphoses of Plants " shows her to have been 
possessed of an education sufficient to enable her 
to share some of his studies. The liaison, which 
must have begun soon after their first acquaint- 
ance, in 1788, led, eighteen years later, to a mar- 
riage, at which their son, already eighteen years 
of age, was present. To this son, born in 1789, 
the Duke August had stood as godfather, — an act 
which shows that, although disapproved, the con- 
nection with Christiane was not ruinous to Goethe's 
court favor. 

Bettine von Arnim we may mention as a gracious 
episode of Goethe's later life, — an evening star on the 
edge of his sunset glory. Like the evening star, she 



352 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



shows herself, and presently " fades in the light that 
she loves." Of great romantic interest in the social 
history of the time, Bettine does not much avail us 
in the present connection, for it does not appear taat 
she exerted any influence over Goethe's literary life. 
One other woman we may name, Fraulein von Le- 
vezow, whose beauty, spiritual or personal, smote the 
ancient heart even in extreme old age, and, provok- 
ing to no unseemly act of folly, called forth the 
"Elegie aus Marienbad." 

I have called to mind very briefly some of the 
women who are known to have had an influence 
upon Goethe's life, because they are sure to have 
had some share in the parentage of that ideal 
family from which his fame in great measure de- 
rives. I am not able, however, to trace out the 
traits and features which might make this relation- 
ship evident. His biographers have already done 
this, — none better, perhaps, than Lewes. 

If we compare Goethe's method with those most 
in favor with us to-day, we shall be impressed above 
all with its generosity. In the line of this com- 
parison, I first think of the great English masters, 
Dickens and Thackeray. From them my mind turns 
to the works of two of my own countrymen, Messrs. 
Howells and James. All of these writers have sat- 
irized women. In all of them, to my mind, though 
not in all to the same extent, the points remarked 
upon are petty, and the inferred damage to character, 
to say the least, disproportionate. Literary women 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



353 



sometimes show the same, or even a greater, unchar- 
ity toward their own sex. An especial example of 
this I find in the volume called " Modern Women," 
of which the authorship is attributed to a lady well 
known in both hemispheres as a writer of fiction. 
Shall we say that these are truths which wound in 
the telling, but which should nevertheless be told ? 
Methinks it is the low interpretation of character 
and of life that wounds. Good surgery works for 
mitigation, not for mutilation. Cynical writers take 
from us our left arm of faith and our right arm 
of courage. They take from us the swift feet of 
sympathy, which would serve humanity, were not 
humanity represented as not worth serving nor 
caring for. 

Goethe has shown us in his writings some very 
poorly behaved women, and has shown them without 
a word of reprobation. Marianne and Philine, in 
" Wilhelm Meister," are of this class, — characters 
which no one would dare to present in English 
literature so baldly as Goethe has presented them in 
the phraseology of his mother tongue. Martha, in 
? Faust," is vile, and Gretchen trebly criminal. Where 
is generosity shown in these very literal renderings 
of women whose life and standard are low ? I find 
that in these, as in his higher creations, Goethe does 
not lose sight of the ideal value of human life and 
character. Philine is redeemed through maternity. 
We see her at last presented to a noble lady, to 
whom she avows the commonplace level of her intel- 

23 



354 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

lectual aspirations, but says, on the other hand, " I 
love my husband and my children," and so passes 
unreproved. Marianne is a sketch left much in 
shadow; yet she wins our human sympathy when 
we dimly see her dying of grief for a lover whom 
she deserved to lose, but whose loss left her incon- 
solable. 

But all these melancholy pictures fade before the 
piteous pathos of Gretchen, — Gretchen, the simple 
peasant maiden, who knows no harm, and means no 
harm to any one. On her way from church, to which 
she went " full of innocence," the Devil sets his snare 
for her. The handsome gallant, urged forward by the 
fiend, touches her imagination. " Wer mag der Herr 
seyn?" A great gentleman to her, — ay, and in him- 
self a deeply philosophic man, with an exquisite 
sense even of the beauty of the innocence against 
which he sins. Goethe does not spare one horror 
from the tale of what befalls her. The low, stupid 
misery in which she cowers in the straw, her dim 
reason presenting the past to her in an intangible 
shape, — nothing real to her but her helpless lone- 
liness, her forsaken condition, and the hangman and 
gallows waiting for her. This agonizing story is 
portrayed with the greatest mastership. The guile- 
less soul of the girl who relates to Faust how she 
brought up her baby sister, how the little cradle 
stood ever by her bed, how many a weary hour 
the little nursling cost her : 

M Dock schmeckt dafiir das Essen, schmeckt die Kuh." 



GOETHE S WOMEN. 



355 



How touching her catechism of Heinrieh, as Faust 
has taught her to call him ! 

Gretchen. 

Now say how does it stand with thy religion ? 
Thou art indeed a heartily good man, 
Only of that, I fear me, thou art careless. 

Faust. 

Let that alone, my child ; thou know'st I love thee, 
And for my loves will give my life and blood, - 
"Would st6al from none his altar and his creed. 

Gretchen. 

That 's not the right thing yet, one must believe. 
Faust. 

Must one ? 

Gretchen. 
Thou honorest not the holy sacrament. 
Dost thou believe in God ? 

Faust. 

Sweet, who dares say, 
" I believe in God'" ? Ask thou the priest, the sage, 
Their answer seems to mock the questioner. 

And the tragedy of her swoon in the cathedral, and 
of the bitter thoughts which precede it : — 

"How different, Gretchen, was 't with thee 
"When blameless thou this altar didst approach, 
From the clasped missal lisping prayers, 
Half childish play, half God in thy young heart ! 
How swims thy head ! what misdeeds in thy thought ! " 

In nothing has Goethe shown more power than in 
this unique portraiture. A peasant girl, as he must 



356 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

have known them, led away, destroyed, ruined, as he 
must have seen them, alas ! too often, — the moral of 
this story needs no pointing. Even Hood's " Think 
of it, dissolute man," would be an impertinence. To 
womankind it almost seems to say : " If God so clothe 
with womanhood the very grass of the field, what 
should you women be who grow up in honor, safety, 
and knowledge?" 

But why should we linger with this poor child 
in her dismal prison, when we can climb with the 
master to such heights of noble imagination ? Let us 
admire, first of all, the breadth of view which includes 
so simple and forlorn a creature, and her very oppo- 
site, the woman who sits in her bower to trace 
out the silver embroidery of the heavens, Macaria 
the blessed ! We may say that this revelation did 
not come to the great master all at once. Already 
in "Gotz," his earliest work, the later performance 
is foreshadowed. Adelheid, the beautiful, corrupt 
woman, Elizabeth, the strong and simple one, are 
drawn with mastery, albeit they are only touched in. 
But the Goethe series would properly begin with 
Charlotte, a conventional type, if a charming one. 
She is hurgerliche, lourgeoise, of that sort which is as 
good as anything. No trace in her of the defrauded 
duchess, of the woman who condescends to live her 
life, holding her merits and pretensions far above her 
sphere. She takes her fate as she finds it, is con- 
scientious in the cutting of bread and butter, intends 
to make a good wife to her prosaic husband, and, 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



357 



though unavoidably touched by Werther's devotion to 
her, and for a moment stirred by it from her mental 
equilibrium, is sure to regain her peace of mind, and 
to end her days worthily and happily, as is best. In 
George Sand's handling, the denouement might have 
been far different. "Werther," like Eousseau's "He- 
loise," gives one cause to reflect upon the changes 
which make the great romance of one period appear 
tame and dull in another. 

In Goethe's greatest drama, "Faust," and in his 
greatest romance, " Wilhelm Meister," the artist cuts 
deep down into the quick of simple, natural passion, 
always with a high handling and intent. He gives 
us, too, the conventional glimpses of character which 
society affords, — the actress, who vainly loves Wil- 
helm's caustic friend, Jarno; the lady sketched in 
as stopping at the inn, and reaching home late on her 
birthday ; the little family celebration of it, spoiled 
by the delay, but still more by the jealous anger 
which steals her soul away ; her faithless lover being 
present to her mind, while her unloved husband 
moves before her eyes, scarcely noticed. But before 
we pass so far, Mignon stays our way, pathetic, like 
Gretchen, an estray, orphaned by the unspeakable 
crime of her parents, but with the instincts of a 
higher race, aspiring heavenward in her loneliness 
and desolation, her melancholy a sweet, angelic mi- 
nor, that ends with a rising cadence. The song, 
" Kennst du das Land ? " is like some magical crys- 
tal ball, held in the hand, but in which one sees 



358 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



visions of things far distant. Mignon gives us all 
Italy in that one beautiful crystallization, — the 
blooming thickets, the gleaming fruit, the soft air, 
the mountain passes, the ancestral halls rich in 
sculptures. Who can show us so much in so little ? 
Only a magician, — and he puts his wonder-ball in 
the hand of a child. 

" Die Schone Seele," the fair soul, is a Protestant 
saint of a type not unfamiliar in Goethe's time, — not 
often seen nor much favored in our own day. The 
absorbing power of religious enthusiasm, divorcing 
youth and beauty from the gay and busy world, 
and turning the sweet, pure eyes all to the contem- 
plation of things transcending human sense, — this 
portraiture is a very strong and perfect one. But 
religion in our day is not interpreted after this as- 
cetic fashion. Nature and she embrace with one 
hand, and aspire with the other. I need not here 
enlarge upon this fortunate change. The reaction 
from mediaeval forms of devotion is too well known 
to need illustration at my hand. Let us, however, 
think of this, — that Goethe thought this now ob- 
solete type worth preserving in his glorious work. 
And let us question whether we cannot have the 
singleness of heart, the unquestioning conscience, of 
his Schone Seele, without that technical sundering 
from social ties and interests which she received as 
the commandment of Heaven, but against which we of 
to-day must rebel. Piety of this sort is to-day called 
Pietism, and stands upon a level with other isms. 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



359 



Casting about in my mind for a schone Seele of our 
own time, I see before me the thoughtful eyes and 
spirit-pure face of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Single 
and devout is she, and somewhat withdrawn from 
the world, and yet such a Nature-friend that the 
heaven which she loves to picture is full of human 
delights, translated out of excess, out of selfishness, 
out of danger. In it the good are holy, harmless, 
and heavenly forever, but are human withal, as 
Christ was human. 

Macaria, darling of the gods, to whom are whis- 
pered the secrets of the universe, sees in the starry 
heavens the path and power of each distant lumi- 
nary, and builds sublimely in her own brain the plan 
of the Master Architect through whom it all came 
to be. Having had acquaintance once with an emi- 
nent astronomer, and knowing, as every one knows, 
that the study of astronomy involves much laborious 
calculation, as well as the keenest observation, I 
asked him what Goethe could have meant by drawing 
the portrait of a woman who knew all these wonders 
by intuition. He replied, " There is no understand- 
ing what a man like Goethe meant by much that he 
wrote, and this with the rest." But I find something 
intelligible even in this mystic description. Goethe's 
feeling of the intuitive power of women was a very 
strong one. He may have added to it a moment's tri- 
fling with the somnambulic phenomena which Swe- 
denborg and other mystics had already introduced to 
the world. The intuitive power of woman is indeed 



360 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



precious to society ; and one of the great fears which 
accompany the advance of the sex in rationalistic 
and purely intellectual discipline, is the dread lest 
in the drill of their new acquisitions they should 
lose this distinctive and invaluable trait. I need 
not here take up this matter either, but I will say, 
as I said before, " Goethe thought this work suggest- 
ive/' We therefore may ponder upon it. 

Two poems of Goethe's, "Der Gott und die Baja- 
din," and " Die Braut von Corinth/' breathe the ful- 
ness of youthful passion, unrestrained by the critical 
after-thought w T hich makes the great poet appear 
even greater in the anatomy of human feeling than 
in its expression. In both of these poems we feel 
the reaction against the pietistic and exclusive ethic 
which must often have appeared to Goethe in the 
light of a Pharisaic tyranny not to be endured. 

Mahadoh, lord of earth, visits the Dancing-girl, 
who greets him as a stranger with smiling hospi- 
tality. Of the god the poet says: 

"If he judge or if he share, 
Manlike he with man must fare." 

And so the divine visitor sees beneath the painted 
cheek a gentle nature, and smiles to find, 

" In deepest perdition, a womanly heart." 

He becomes her guest, her master, her spouse. 
Waking from her dream of wedded bliss, she finds 
him dead. Those who bear him to his funeral pyre 
deny her the widow's precious right, to be burned 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



361 



with her husband ; but she, leaping into the flames, 
is caught in his embrace, and carried to the region 
of the Immortals. This story illustrates the passive 
religion of the Hindoo woman. 

In early Christendom, a youth betrothed to a 
young girl in Corinth journeys thither from his dis- 
tant home and claims the hospitality of the house to 
which he stands thus related. Here, in the deep of 
night, he is visited by a vampire, the ghost of his be- 
trothed, who has met death in a convent to which her 
mother's vows had consigned her on recovery from a 
dangerous illness. Surprised by the mother, the fatal, 
horrible visitor touches us by this piteous appeal : 

" Hearken, mother, now my latest prayer, 
And a sexton send who shall be my friend, 
And my narrow, wretched home unclose. 
Bring in flames the loving to repose ! 
"When the spark shall show, 
"When the ashes glow, 
To the old-time deities we '11 go." 

"The Erl King" is the only poem of Goethe's 
which offers itself to my mind as having the same 
terrific suggestion and horror as are found in this 
composition. Its horror, however, is mystical and 
pathetic, condensed from the shadows and chills of 
evening deepening into night, while the Bride is seen 
by flashes of vivid lightning whose accompanying 
thunder shakes, with the primeval forces of Nature, 
the foundations of the new, aspiring Faith. 

The climax of Goethe's guneology — you will allow 
me this word — is reached in the concluding sentence 



362 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



of "Faust/' — "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan," 
" The Eternal Womanly attracts us, draws us on." 
The gravity of the nominative here seems to ask a 
grave interpretation of the verb. Anziehen literally 
means " to draw on," metaphorically means " to 
attract." Let us give it the weight of both mean- 
ings, and interpret it as expressing the attraction 
which indeed draws or leads us on. This wonderful 
phrase has been often quoted, and much dwelt upon. 
As the last word of a mighty life-drama, —.a drama 
whose intense interest holds the world wherever pre- 
sented to-day, — we are glad to find in it a deep 
meaning. After the chorus of the angels, and the 
visitation of the Demon, after daring speculation and 
more daring sin, after the vanity of imagination, after 
the substantiality of possession, comes the final voice, 
"Das Ewig-Weibliche." 

It might seem strange if people of our dimensions 
should feel it incumbent upon them to apologize for 
anything that a mighty man like Goethe did or said. 
Still is it one of the meekening reflections belonging 
to our race, that the greatest of men (could we give 
one that rank) cannot be rightly judged without the 
tenderness of human charity. Goethe's unjustifiable 
treatment of his early loves, his unjustifiable relation 
with the mother of his boy, — these are matters that 
call for charitable judgment. And I find the world 
more bound to charity to-day than heretofore, on 
account of the improved methods of analysis which 
belong to our later thought and culture. Phrenology 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



363 



and the study of heredity enable the analyst of 
human nature in our time to trace the effects of 
leading characteristics more fully and subtly than 
was possible in earlier times, in which divisions were 
more crude and absolute. 

The power of Goethe's imagination in matters per- 
sonal to himself is shown in the circumstance that 
the mere anticipation of a first meeting with Frau 
von Stein cost him three sleepless nights. What im- 
possible perfections he expected to find in her, we 
can hardly conjecture, — prosaic creatures that we 
are, who would not lie awake one night for any pre- 
sentation that can be imagined ! This vivid ima- 
gination, we must think, would have been apt to 
lend its brilliant coloring to the encounters of a first 
acquaintance. Its ecstasy, though supreme, would 
necessarily be short-lived. Onward, onward, would 
this flying steed bear its rider, who is not always its 
master. So the enchantment of one personage would 
vanish with the enchantment of the surrounding 
scene. The scene, the personage, remain : the flying 
one, whose nature it is to fly, has gone. 

Of his strangely delayed marriage we may conjec- 
ture that the scandal occasioned by the relation pre- 
ceding it was much less than would have been, at the 
time, that of a marriage so unequal and unsuitable. 
Goethe, the world-man, had, no doubt, respect to this 
consideration. Years pass on, — years of faithful 
affection and service on the part of his compan- 
ion. The power of the hearth and home has grown 



364 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



supreme with him. Troubles gather around him, — 
troubles in which Christiane's better qualities have 
afforded him real comfort and support. He deter- 
mines to give the dignity of wifehood to the woman 
around whom have centred the tender and intimate 
associations of nearly twenty years. Even with these 
grave reasons behind it, the marriage causes loud and 
instant blame. Goethe's friends, however, were glad 
of it, and Christiane's conduct, we are told, confirmed 
their approbation of the step. 

The modern theory of imagination is that all quick 
and fine perception is in a great degree dependent 
upon it. We must think Goethe in this respect 
most exceptionally gifted. In the wide range of 
female character which his works unfold to us, this 
perception of the beautiful impresses me as the trait 
most characteristic of him. The exquisite tenderness 
and simplicity of his Gretchen, so unstrained, so true 
to nature, shows the wonderful sense with which he 
looked upon the lowliest creatures. Egmont's Clar- 
chen has the same pathos, though not the same 
character. Gretchen's sweet soul makes itself felt 
through the poverty of her speech, which is narrow 
and all peasant-like. Clarchen is city-bred, and has 
the gift of expression : — 

" Freudvoll und leidvoll, 
Gedankenvoll seyn ; 
Himmel hoch jauchzend, 
Zum Tode betriibt : 
Gliicklich allein 
1st die Seele, die liebt." 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



365 



Of this simple womanhood he has also given us a 
charming picture in that dialogue which brings be- 
fore us a man of high culture, who, among the ruins 
of some ancient fane or city, encounters a mother 
with her infant child. He muses of the past, and of 
all the great " may have beens." The woman can 
tell him nothing of all this, has no talisman with 
which to call up visions of centuries long vanished 
But her baby wakes, and she speaks to |iim the lan- 
guage of all time : — 

" Hat es geschlafen, liebes Herz ! " 

And this brings a ray of purest light serene into the 
sombre picture. 

Equally at home is he with high dames, — with 
Leonora of Este, Tasso's beloved, — w T ith the calm, 
sweet daughter of Agamemnon. 

This sense of beauty, then, clothes the Goethean 
world with varied glories. It is universal, in shadow 
as in light. It lifts the depths of human nature into 
the daylight of God's providence. To its fine inter- 
pretation, nothing is absolutely common, nothing is 
hopelessly unclean. Nor is this a mere worship of 
what may delight the outer senses. The value of the 
beautiful, in form, in character, and in life, — this 
deep and steadfast persuasion goes with our poet 
from his first work to his last. Deeply Christian 
is this trait, for it is the combination of the three 
foremost graces of Christianity, Faith, Hope, and 
Charity. 



366 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



An intense sense of the pleasurable accompanied 
this keen perception of all beauties. The expres- 
sion of this, here and there, has led many to think of 
Goethe as an Epicurean, in the least worthy inter- 
pretation of the term. He belongs, on the contrary, 
if to the sect at all, to its high philosophic order. 
This view will, in all probability, have been suffici- 
ently presented and considered in this philosophic 
company. I need not dwell upon the love of scien- 
tific observation and research which eminently placed 
him with the great dignitaries of the sect. But of 
his eudaimonistic temperament itself I have a word 
to say. 

Pleasure-lovers are of two sorts, the self-engrossed 
and the benevolent. It is a narrow interpretation, 
even of enjoyment, which can regard it as a solitary 
good, in which the welfare of others has properly no 
part. I cannot for one moment think of Goethe as 
imprisoned in the fetters of this selfish greed, which 
grasps what others offer, snatches what they refuse, 
and exults in what it gathers, while it gives nothing. 
No, that serene nature must have been a light-diffus- 
ing one. Where he came, things took on at once a 
brighter aspect. The dull and trivial small change of 
society was redeemed in his hands to a genuine cur- 
rency ; the icicles of form and custom became living 
gems in his sunshine. He was a great present help 
and power, and his literary legacies, precious as they 
are, are poor in comparison with what it would have 
been to see him, to hear him, to feel his wonderful 



GOETHE'S WOMEN. 



367 



magnetism for one half-hour. This great soul carried 
its great life with it, and made a paltry Ducal resi- 
dence the literary centre of Continental Europe. 
Kings and conquerors did him homage. He, ren- 
dering respect and courtesy where they were due, 
paid homage only to truth. 

The last scene comes. Is it still the Eternal 
Womanly ? Not to laurel and crown does it call 
thee, Goethe ! not to the princely court, the gay 
dames, the admiring world. All this thou hast had, 
as was thy right. Thou hast wrought in thy morn- 
ing, and noontide, and evening. Night comes now, 
and brings thee rest. Like a little child on its 
mother's breast the great man sinks back on the 
bosom of the infinite love. The Eternal Womanly, 
the eternally loving, folds him to a slumber which, as 
we think of it, seems to still for a moment the heart 
of the world. 



368 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



XIII. 

GOETHE'S FAUST. 

/ 

By W. T. HAEKIS. 

We have often heard that Shakespeare is to be 
regarded as the greatest of the world's literary men. 
Especially since Coleridge and Carlyle made known 
to us the analyses of the great literary critics and 
philosophers of Germany, this verdict has been gain- 
ing universal acceptance among English-speaking 
nations. The significance of this estimate of Shake- 
speare is not so easy to discover. Let any young 
person try to state wherein the great world-poets are 
so eminent above their fellows, and he may be led to 
change his opinion many times before he satisfies 
himself or us with the standard of criticism that he 
adopts. Is it the music of Shakespeare's verse, or 
the charm of his metaphor, or the interest of his 
situations, or the ideal suggestions of his words, or 
the conformity of his dramatic solutions to the de- 
sires and aspirations of the heart ? No, it is not any 
one nor all of these things that would or could de- 
serve the honor that is paid to Shakespeare, or Dante, 
or even Homer. 

It is doubtless a great thing — far greater than 
the items mentioned — to have the poetical insight 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



369 



that can see the spiritual significance of things, and 
express this by metaphor and personification. In 
proportion to the insight of the poet, he sees the cor- 
respondence between the visible and invisible, and 
invents new modes of expression for truth discerned 
internally. The great world-poets have this faculty 
in an eminent degree, but they share it with other 
great poets. Their place apart from and above the 
circle of great poets is due to something else than 
this eminent degree of insight into the spiritual cor- 
respondences in nature. To this insight they add 
what may be called an ethical insight, which may 
be more fully described as an intuitive knowledge 
of human life in its individual and social aspects. 
Shakespeare and Homer see in every deed its conse- 
quences to society, and the retroactive consequences 
upon the doer. We call such insight a knowledge 
of human nature, — a knowledge of life. 

Given a human action, certain effects will follow. 
But this action has also presuppositions, and these 
the great poet sees as well as the consequences. He 
not only sees them, but presents them in their com- 
pleteness. Shakespeare probed human experience 
to the bottom, and discovered one by one all of its 
presuppositions, and collected them and exhibited 
them to the spectator. Inasmuch as there is no 
isolated man, but each one is a member of society 
it is requisite to portray the status of society, in 
order to explain the particular deed of the individual. 
A common man acts in accordance with use and 

24 



370 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



wont, and follows without deviation the beaten track 
marked out for him by his fellows, — his immediate 
kinsmen and neighbors. The heroic character, with 
an eccentric orbit, collides with society and makes a 
theme for tragedy. In the portrayal of such col- 
lisions the ethical might of society and the daemonic 
power of the individual come into clear relief, and 
furnish us opportunity to study social and ethical 
laws. For it is only when we feel the universality 
and necessity of a determination or characteristic 
that we truly know it. 

While it satisfies the ordinary story-teller to relate 
the direct particulars of the collision of his hero, and 
these only, nothing will content Shakespeare but a 
complete presentation of all the accessories. His 
drama will so expound the action that we may see 
the antecedents which have furnished occasion, as 
well as all the concomitant reactions which accom- 
pany and follow it. A very small item being given, 
— by some Geoffrey of Monmouth, Holinshed, or 
Saxo Grammaticus, — Shakespeare proceeds to dis- 
cover the world of presuppositions necessary to make 
that isolated item a piece of living reality. Given 
the small arc, and he computes the total circle ; given 
the deed of Hamlet, or Cymbeline, or Macbeth, and 
forthwith he conjures up all the concrete relations, 
the Family, Society, and State, — the moral status of 
the individual, and his ethical interaction with the 
social condition in which he lives, and the subtle 
casuistry by which the hero directs his course. , 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 371 

An insight into the correspondence between nature 
and mind is the first requisite of a great poet ; but 
an equal insight into the ethical relation of the indi- 
vidual to the social whole is the additional requisite. 
Without this second insight into human life, the poet 
cannot belong to the select circle of world-poets. He 
may " write poetry for poets/' — as it is called, — 
with the former species of insight ; but he cannot be 
a people's poet unless he sees the mediation of the 
individual with the institutions of the race. For 
while the individual acts in his own person, the 
social whole acts through institutions and through 
individuals set apart and endowed with representa- 
tive might. No deed is isolated, all deeds are inter- 
dependent ; only the totality of conditions enables 
us to comprehend the puniest act. See the part in 
the whole, and then you are able to see the reflection 
of the whole in the part. 

This is not a doctrine of necessity and fatalism, as 
it might at first seem, but the true doctrine of free- 
dom and nforal responsibility. Freedom demands 
self-determination, — that the deed shall return upon 
its author, so that he shall receive its consequences. 
Now, human society, looked at closely, is an organ- 
ism for this very purpose. The individual reflects 
society and is reflected by society. What he deals 
out to his neighbors comes back to him, in circles of 
greater or less circumference, according to the degree 
of generality in which he works. Through society 
in its industrial, domestic, and social aspects, this 



372 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



reflection of his deed upon the doer is of an implicit 
character; in the State it is explicit; the State 
letting him go free when his deed does not infringe 
on the rights of society, but otherwise reflecting back 
his deed upon him in the inconvenient form of 
prison bars and hempen cords. 

The deed must be shown in its relations in order 
to exhibit this reflection ; the fewer relations, the 
less reflection and the less truth. Shakespeare excels 
all poets in the portrayal of this reflection of the 
deed upon the doer. It is not to be expected of a 
poet that he shall be conscious of his method, or of 
the logical process involved in the dramatic relations 
which he places before us. No artist should divide 
his attention between the abstract and the concrete 
in this manner. His best work he will accomplish 
from the instinct of his art. Shakespeare instinct- 
ively adopted his method of exhaustively reflecting 
and presenting the elements of a situation, and we 
doubt not he felt rather than thought that this and 
that accessory must be uttered and expressed, be- 
cause it stood out in his creative imagination as 
essentially belonging to the representation of the 
deed. 

The correspondence between spiritual being and 
nature renders possible the expression of what is seen 
as inward fact. All language has arisen through this 
first insight of the poet. The second insight of the 
poet has given us the ethical sentiments, the feeling 
of the solidarity of the individual with the social 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



373 



whole. Slightly paraphrasing Shakespeare's language 
in " Troilus and Cressida": "Man, however richly he 
may be endowed, [" how dearly ever parted/'] how- 
ever much he may possess in world's goods or intel- 
lectual acquirements; cannot make boast to have that 
which he hath, nor feels what he possesses but by 
reflection from the recognition of his fellow men ; as 
when his virtues shining upon others heat them, 
and they retort that heat again to the first giver." 
This thought becomes the possession of mankind in 
an emotional form through the works of the world- 
poets. 

As Orpheus is fabled to have built Thebes with 
the sound of his lyre, so each people has its Orpheus 
who has made a spiritual city for it. Although the 
great artist does not first think out his subject in a 
logical or philosophical form, and then proceed to 
clothe it in marble, in tones, or in rhymes and metre, 
yet his creative imagination seizes and fixes the 
shapes and forms which hover before it as typical 
expressions of his problem of life. For each person 
finds himself here involved in a "problem of life." 
Nevertheless, a work of art is not an allegory. It is 
rather, as Carlyle says, a phantasmagory embody- 
ing a many-sided meaning. When we analyze it, 
we may find logic and dialectic in it as well as in 
other objects, — or just as we find laws in unconscious 
nature. 

Homer, the first great people's poet of the Western 
or European world, taught man to recognize in na- 



374 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE, 



ture the presence of the human spirit. The motions, 
sounds, and apparitions of the beings of nature ex- 
press some desire or meaning of the invisible con- 
scious beings who form the sphere of reality behind 
the visible world. But Homer reveals likewise 
human nature, both as heroic individual and also as 
representative of institutions, — the State and the 
Family. The glorious Achilles, the type of beautiful 
and powerful individuality, has to be subordinated 
to legally constituted authority, — to Agamemnon, 
who is endowed with the power of the nation : hence 
the song of Troy. The Family too is sacred as an 
institution, and the attack upon it by the hero Paris 
is the occasion of the war. Thus, by presenting to 
the Greeks the picture of their twofold nature, real- 
ized in beautiful individuality and in ethical might, 
Homer made his people conscious of themselves. 

Dante, another great world-poet, has revealed hu- 
man nature in its twofold aspect of religious life with 
individual life in conflict with it. The highest insti- 
tution, the Church, when not corrupted by individuals 
who represent it temporarily, is the Celestial Paradise. 
From this highest institution descends to the insti- 
tutions of the State and the Family a dispensation of 
authority which gives them religious superiority over 
the individual. By disregarding these institutions 
and finding his motives of action in his selfish pas- 
sions, the individual falls into one or more of the 
seven mortal sins and finds the Inferno in the ful- 
ness of selfish gratification. Dante as a poet does 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



375 



not so much make the revelation of the beautiful — 
Homer's function — as of the holy. He does not 
indicate the correspondences of nature which reveal 
the soul as finding free expression in matter, but, 
rather, the correspondences that emblem the struggle 
of the soul against its material environment, and its 
victory or defeat. Homer shows us the incarnation 
of the soul, while Dante shows us its resurrection. 
Shakespeare is the poet of society, not so much in 
its national aspect or religious aspect as in its free 
civil aspect. 1 

It is left to the individual in civil society to take 
the initiative; he makes such combinations as he 
chooses, in view of his own welfare and the conditions 
about him. Acting in this unrestrained manner, the 
individual may come into collision with either insti- 
tution, — the State, Church, or Family; or he may 
collide simply with the normal conditions of free 
civil activity. These conditions or laws of free civil 
combination, which rule the sphere of human activity 
in which the individual procures his food, clothing, 
shelter, amusement, and culture, are the written and 
unwritten laws of thrift, economics, morality, and 
courtesy, which in the aggregate make up social 
policy and insure success to the individual as his 
meed. That mankind form a solid unit socially is 
the presupposition of Shakespeare, and it has become 
still more a conscious presupposition in an epoch of 

1 " Homer is the poet of the nation ; Shakespeare, the poet of 
society; Goethe, the poet of the individual." H. C. Broekmeyer. 



376 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



telegraphs, daily newspapers, and society novels. In 
Shakespeare there are no mere lay figures, but each 
one has a will of his own and a personal interest 
commensurate with his individuality. The world of 
Shakespeare, compared with that of Homer or Dante, 
is one of infinite details. But a unity is found for 
these details in the principle of reflection. The 
central event of the drama is reflected in each single 
movement or phase of movement in the drama. The 
great impending world-tragedy of the senate-house in 
Eome is reflected in the fantasy of plebeians, and 
their rumor reaches Caesar on the fatal morning : 

" Most horrid sights seen by the watch. . . . 
Graves have yawned, and yielded up their dead ; . . . 
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds, . . . 
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol." 

The very elements reflect the premonitions in the 
minds of the people. So, too, around the castle at 
Inverness on the night of Duncan's murder: 

" The heavens, as troubled with man's act, 
Threaten his bloody stage. . . . 

On Tuesday last, 
A falcon, towering in her pride of place, 
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. 
And Duncan's horses, . . . 

Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out. . . . 
...... 'T is said they ate each other. " 

When seemingly detached and indifferent details 
reflect the central action of the work of art, its unity 
is intensified to the highest degree. In Shakespeare 
we learn that the slightest word or deed of the man is 



GOETHE'S FAUST, 



377 



reflected back by the social environment, even when 
the organized institutions, the State, the Church, the 
Family, do not take cognizance of it. 

In this line of world-poets comes Goethe as the 
fourth. His central thought is that of the mediation 
of the individual for himself. In his writings the 
great institutions appear in the background of the 
scene in their substantial might ; but what especially 
interests Goethe is not the primary and immediate 
effect of the deeds of the individual, nor yet their 
secondary effect, the reaction of the institutions 
against those deeds, but the third phase, that of the 
formation of character in the individual, through his 
readjustment of his aims and purposes in view of 
the effect of his deeds. The growth of character 
through experience is not the direct and conscious 
theme of poetry before Goethe. Homer shows us 
the change of purpose in Achilles by reason of the 
reaction of his deeds upon himself. Dante shows 
how the reaction of deeds upon the personality forms 
an environment which may be of the Inferno, the 
Purgatory, or the Paradiso. The Purgatory shows 
growth of character through persistent will-power, 
but it does not descend from the type and symbol to 
the concrete every-day life. It constructs an arti- 
ficial world beyond life, and concentrates the vices 
and ^virtues into single types. Shakespeare, on the 
other hand, deals with the very concrete itself, and 
furthermore does not exhibit the purgatorial stage, 
in which character is formed by persistent endeavor. 



378 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



He shows the Inferno in its concretest form, — rarely 
the Paradiso. But while he is farther off than Dante 
from Goethe, in this matter of the omission of purga- 
tory he is nearer in the fact that he approaches the 
problem of the individual in some of his tragedies, 
and especially in his " Hamlet." In a certain sense 
" Hamlet " is the prototype of the literature of the 
present. The problem of the individual is how to 
adjust himself to his time, or how " to set it right," 
if he is in advance of his time in any respect. But 
Shakespeare only states the problem, he does not 
solve it. He lets accident, weakness, or surplus of 
will-power and strong passions, lead to error, and 
then shows how error reacts to deepen temporary 
aberration into permanent character. The tragic 
characters tend to insanity through the fixing of 
their ideas in one channel. That which in their 
nature was a mere proclivity, easily held in abeyance 
by the will-power, now becomes an irresistible pas- 
sion, forced onward by its own results, and they find 
it easier to go onward than to return. 

Goethe has treated the problem of the individual 
in two great works of art, — the " Faust " and the 
" Wilhelm Meister." In " Faust " the individual has 
measurably attained his culture, but finds himself 
in collision with the world through the fact that he 
has arrived at agnosticism. The " Meister " traces 
for us the career of a youth, from the beginning at 
the bottom of the ladder, up to a point where he 
becomes clear in regard to his relations to the world. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



379 



Faust is relatively mature as regards his education 
or culture. Meister is immature in regard to every- 
thing. 

Inasmuch as the problem of the individual is not 
that of the production of the universal, — not the 
founding of a state, or a church, or any great insti- 
tution, but rather the adjustment of himself as an 
individual to the institutions already existing, — it 
follows that the first occupation to which he is called 
is that of education, — education, however, in the 
broadest sense of the word. To adapt the individual 
to life, to solve his problem, is to educate him into 
such habits of living that he may contribute his mite 
to society and receive in return the help of his fellow- 
men. The individual in each epoch of civilization 
has his revolt against the subjugation of his indepen- 
dence. He does not wish to be subordinated, with- 
out his consent, to an alien might. The process of 
education reconciles him to the institutions, by con- 
vincing him that they are necessary for the realiza- 
tion of his rational self. If they had not been made 
by others, and handed down from the immemorial 
past, he would set about making them now. As it 
is, he builds them anew by giving them his hearty 
support. Progress of the individual on this line is 
a continued participation in the civilization of one's 
age, — a thoroughly positive citizenship. 

But, over against this, there is possible another 
career of education or culture. Supposing that there 
is a very deep spirit of independence in the individual, 



380 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



he finds a difficulty in the bridge that leads from his 
own opinions and conceits to the adoption of the 
conviction of society. He rebels against the re- 
quired subordination to public opinion, and will not 
bow to its behests, either as fashion of the com- 
munity, social usage, law of the state, or mandate of 
religion. He stands at the threshold, and demands 
of each that it shall demonstrate to him its necessity 
as a rational thing before he shall adopt it. He will 
yield to it if it proves its rational character, but if 
it is only a conventional affair, a mere fashion, he 
will have none of it. Now the cases of strong indi- 
viduality may become so frequent as to be the rule, 
instead of the exception. Then an age of revolution 
ensues, and the education of the age lays stress on the 
self-activity of the individual, and inveighs against 
authority. The centrifugal power of individuality is 
increased, and the centripetal power of obedience to 
established order becomes weakened, until it loses 
its constraining power. The French Eevolution en- 
sues. Individuality alone is held sacred, and all 
external authority accursed. Sansculottism is the 
result. Under the banner of Liberty, Equality, and 
Fraternity for all, there is a swift descent to abso- 
lute personal tyranny. Each one finds a limit to his 
liberty in the liberty of his fellow, and through the 
collision arises universal distrust. The guillotine is 
the only remedy. Only dead enemies are safe ene- 
mies to have. Disciplined by this reign of terror, 
authority is again restored. Eational authority, it 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



381 



has been found, must assert itself first as a mere 
external constraint against the individual, and ini- 
tiate a process of enlightenment in him. He may 
learn why he obeys law and duty and fashion, and 
change his blind obedience into a rational obedience, 
which is freedom. But at all events he must obey. 

In Goethe's life, extending from 1749 to 1832, the 
one great event in world history is the French Eevo- 
lution. Indeed, our American Ee volution, with its 
Declaration of Independence and its " All men are 
born free and equal," is in a certain sense a reflection 
of the European movement. Not only France, b^ 
all Europe, had been set aflame in Goethe's ^ outh 
by Eousseau's work on the Inequality am^ng Men. 
Their thoughts had been turned in the direction of 
democracy by his "Contrat Social" a*id his "Smile." 
The conservators of institutions ^new no means of 
checking the revolution in f1 ^e popular consciousness. 
No intellectual bridge rjould be furnished, over which 
it could go from r^ure individualism to an insight 
into the necessity of institutions for the realization of 
freedom. Hf^rice, all things were readjusted by revo- 
lution. In 'the end, a necessity, which all could see, re- 
established institutional authority in France. Mean- 
while the ? rest of Europe looked on and pondered the 
problem . The German mind had set itself about the 
task of / discovering a theoretical necessity for the in- 
stituti^ons of civilization. Immanuel Kant, starting 
from j the theoretical foundation of Hume, — which 
migl/t be regarded as the basis also of Eousseauism, — 



) 



382 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



had reduced the problem to its lowest terms, and 
finally demonstrated the necessity of the postulates 
of authority, moral and otherwise, for the conduct of 
human life. Eight years before the destruction of 
the Bastile, Kant published his theoretical philoso- 
phy, " A Critique of Pure Season," showing the limits 
of the speculative faculty to grasp the problems of the 
world. The year before the French Eevolution be- 
gan, he published the " Critique of the Practical Sea- 
son," completing his demonstration of the necessity 
in human nature for the sacrifice of the individual 
to his higher self, as defined in the moral law and 
organized into institutions in the form of civilization. 
Thus, wh\le the historical process went on in France, 
as an external phenomenon with deafening explo- 
sions, in the otill world of German thought there 
went on a corresponding theoretical process, which 
more swiftly reached the positive solution. But there 
was another solution in progress. In the world of 
literature a new world-poet had been born, who was 
to devote his entire life to the sameVJproblem, and to 
leave its solution in great works of ai#- 

It must not be understood that any of \the solutions 
of this problem of individualism are merely negative. 
As suggested by Hume, stated by the Encyclopedists, 
put into universal literary form by Eousseau, .occasion 
was given for a threefold answer. There ,^ as ^ e 
practical answer, realistic to the last degree, — the 
answer beginning with the destruction of the l^astile, 
passing through the Seign of Terror into its L ogical 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



383 



consequence, Napoleonism, and closing at Waterloo. 
There was the theoretic, speculative solution in the 
Kantian Critiques of the Eeason, and besides this 
the solution of the world-literary man, Goethe. 
The political answer was not a mere negative one, 
for it refused to return to its beginning. All Europe 
read the verdict : No more abstract tyranny for the 
people. Authority, it is true, there must be; yes, but 
an authority that expresses the welfare of the social 
whole, and is reflected in the rational conviction of 
each individual. Not only France came to this basis, 
but all Europe was led to adopt it. The Kantian so- 
lution in its first aspect is negative : " Man cannot 
know truth theoretically," — the conclusion of the 
Critique of the Pure Eeason. But in the Critique of 
the Practical Eeason the solution is positive. Man 
in order to be a social being, or even a rational being, 
must set up above himself the moral law as absolute 
authority, fin this moral authority root the insti- 
tutions of civilization: they are its instruments of 
realization] The literary solution of Goethe is like- 
wise thoroughly affirmative. Eousseau had given 
literary form to the problem. In his wonderful prose, 
the question went home to the consciousness of Eu- 
rope and Europeans, wherever they were. Goethe 
put into literary form the answer to this problem, 
and his answer is reaching the consciousness of the 
world, by progressive degrees, throughout this cen- 
tury and the centuries to follow. 

The individual, as we have seen, if he is endowed 



384 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



with a strong feeling of independence, may at any 
time stand on his threshold and challenge the ap- 
proach of authority. As a mere individual affair, it 
is not of much significance. But it is possible also 
to find an entire historical epoch, as we have seen, 
given to this assertion of the individual against ex- 
ternal authority. This genesis of individual protest 
against all authority justifies its treatment by a world- 
poet as a world-problem. Or, it might be said, the 
universal nature of the problem avails to give a uni- 
versal significance to its literary solution and to elevate 
Goethe into the rank of world-poet. 

We learn that Goethe, at the early age of twenty 
years, discovered in the popular legend of Faust the 
vehicle for the literary statement of the problem and 
its solution. He saw, in short, the problem of the 
reconciliation of man as individual with man as social 
whole, and divined the affirmative answer. He tells 
us himself, 1 in his letter to Wilhelm von Hum- 
boldt, in 1832, that his youthful conception of Faust 
had been before him for more than sixty years, " the 
whole series having been from the first clear to me, 
though not in all their details." u I have always," he 
writes, " quietly kept my original plan in view, and 
have worked out singly those scenes which happened 
to interest me most ; so that there remained gaps in 
the Second Part, only to be bridged over by investing 
them with an interest proportioned to the rest." 

1 Quoted by Hermann Grimm, "Life and Times of Goethe." See 
English Translation by Sarah Holland Adams, p. 502. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



385 



Faust as a mythological character embodies the 
conception of an individual who obtains the service 
of the intellect for his selfish ends, and sacrifices his 
future good for present enjoyment. In its different 
elaborations it had come to express nearly every one 
of the phases that Goethe afterwards united in his 
work, with the essential exception that there was no 
other than a tragic denouement ; for its hero. Using 
this legend for a vehicle, Goethe, after his manner, 
connected and subordinated the details into one 
whole which animated the parts. Every circum- 
stance had its motive furnished for it. That which 
lay in it as enigmatic or unconscious, Goethe brought 
up to light and expressed with fulness. Why should 
Faust sell his soul to the Evil One ? Evidently, 
thought Goethe, the all-sufficient motive for this is 
despair of attaining the blessedness of divine life. 
What does such despair presuppose ? Unsatisfied 
aspiration, was the reply. The condition of this, 
again, perennially arose through a species of philo- 
sophic speculation, which arrived at the conviction 
that the Universal Power of Nature is not a personal 
one like man, but something formless and negative 
to the persistence of all forms. 

In the eighth book of his Autobiography, he tells 
us of his studies of the alchemists and Hermetic 
writers. He carried these on in his twentieth year, 
assisted by his friend, the Fraiilein von Klettenberg. 
They read the works of Welling, Paracelsus, Basil 
Valentine, Van Helmont, and Starkey. He traced 

25 



386 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

all these writings to their source in the Neo-Platonic 
school of philosophers. Here was a fountain of 
theosophy. Those thinkers busied themselves with 
the problem of Nature and the Absolute. The His- 
tory of the Church and of the Heretics, by Arnold, 
gave him the necessary clue to the relation which 
these JsTeo-Platonic speculations held to the accepted 
Christian doctrines, and at this early age Goethe had 
grappled seriously with the profoundest questions 
that can occupy the mind of man. Nowhere as in 
the history of heresy do we discover the genuine 
speculative basis of the Christian dogmas. The 
heresies arose through an effort on the part of indi- 
viduals to find the necessary truth of the doctrines 
of the Church. The real speculative basis of these 
doctrines was developed by the Church fathers in 
their controversial treatises directed against those 
heresies. One familiar with those theological dis- 
cussions, and especially with the jNeo-Platonic and 
Gnostic speculations, will not be surprised to read, 
in the eighth book of the " Wahrheit und Dichtung," 
the statement of the view which Goethe himself had 
formed. 1 Attention is called particularly to his 
view of the possible annihilation of the wicked by 
continued concentration upon themselves, and of the 
prevention of this by an act of grace. 

The speculations of Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism 
were little known during the Middle Ages. The 
contact with the Arabian learning in the tenth and 

1 Page 300 of Bonn's Translation. 



GOETHE'S FAUST, 



387 



succeeding centuries, and finally the westward mi- 
gration of learned Greeks after the fall of Constanti- 
nople, gave a great impulse to the study of mysticism 
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A mixture 
of physical, metaphysical, and theological doctrines, 
expressed in a technique derived from all three 
sources, constituted this mysticism, often called 
" Theosophy." The chemical knowledge involved 
originated, of course, with the Arabians, and it is 
important to note that the metaphysics and theology 
were influenced in their doctrines by the alchemy 
connected with it. For chemistry reveals to us the 
mutability of material forms. In the retort, a sub- 
stance can be compelled to change from one form to 
another. 

The tendency of the mind is to generalize the 
facts before it. Hence the alchemist swiftly con- 
cluded : there is no form that abides, not even the 
form of consciousness whose shape is to be subject 
and object of itself. The substance, or true being, is 
formless. It is an energy, but an energy that acts 
only in two ways, to produce form or to destroy form. 
In itself it is in no wise any form whatever. Form 
belongs only to product or result, — it is natura na- 
turata, and not natura naturans. What follows from 
this is evidently the doctrine of Pantheism : God is 
pure negative Might, and all that has form is finite 
and perishable. Man, too, is perishable. Moreover, 
by reason of the fact that consciousness is a form, it 
cannot appertain to the Absolute. Hence, too, the 



388 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



Absolute cannot be known by human reason, because 
there can be nothing distinguished except by its 
form, and hence a formless absolute is a pure nothing 
to the mind. That the legend of Faust is the reflec- 
tion in the popular mind of this study of alchemy, 
there is no doubt. Goethe takes this for granted, 
and accordingly places his Faust in a lofty arched 
Gothic chamber, surrounded by the appliances of 
alchemy, a library, and " ancestral lumber." In the 
very first scene Goethe proceeds to express in the 
mouth of Faust the agnostic standpoint of Panthe- 
ism : " I have been through all human learning, and 
know that nothing can be known." 1 He summons up 
spirits, the moving principle of nature, or the Macro- 
cosm which shows all things in the world connected 
by interdependence. 

We cannot know one thing except through the 
rest on which it depends. That which possesses 
form is dependent on the formless. We can pursue 
the hidden substance from one form to another, but 
never overtake it in its pure essence. Hence Faust, 
who aspires to know truth, is in despair. Eecourse 
to magic only serves to convince him of the hope- 
lessness of knowing the Absolute. For by magic he 
has summoned the spirit of the Macrocosm and the 
Earth Spirit. The former symbolizes his study of 

1 "In the first sentence of the poem, the fundamental contradic- 
tion, the theme, or the ' argument,' is stated in its naked abstractness, 
just as Achilles' wrath is the first sentence of the Iliad." Brock- 
meyer, Letters on Faust, III. 



GOETHE'S FAUST, 



389 



the infinite network of relations which constitutes 
nature. He cannot press through these relations to 
reach the Absolute ; or if he does, he encounters pure 
negation of all form. All form is show alone, — a 
mere shadowy manifestation of the Absolute. Nor 
is it any better with the Earth Spirit which rules a 
part of the Macrocosm, the earth-sphere. The celes- 
tial and the supercelestial worlds are beyond the 
sphere of the Earth Spirit. But Faust cannot com- 
prehend even the earth process. It is too general, 
too vast, for him. The spirit that lives in " Being's 
floods and Actions storm " is so general and so form- 
less that he is both birth and grave of all form. 
Man cannot hope to know him nor participate in his 
eternity. Hence aspiration for knowledge is spurned 
by the Absolute, and there remains only despair. 

Here, therefore, is the matter for the tragedy. 1 It 
lies so deep that it may be regarded as including all 

1 "The denial of the possibility of the manifestation of self-con- 
scious intelligence in the individual [i. e. the denial that man can 
know truth] is the denial of the possibility of its realization in the 
family, society, and the State [i. e. secular institutions], as well as 
the denial of the actualization of that intelligence in the forms of 
Art, Religion, and Philosophy. [For there can be no Art or mani- 
festation of the infinite in the finite, if there is no possibility of recog- 
nizing it by conscious intelligence. So, too, religion and philosophy 
would be impossible.] Now if this denial of the possibility of know- 
ing truth assume the form of a conviction in the consciousness of 
an individual, a nation, an age, then there results a contradiction 
which involves in the sweep of its universality the entire spiritual 
world of man. For it is the self-consciousness of that individual, 
nation, or age in direct conflict with itself, — not with this or that 



390 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



other collisions within it. Most works of art spe- 
cialize the collision and treat of an attack on the 
Family, or the State, or some one institution; but 
the Faust collision strikes at the very nature of insti- 
tutions, and hence includes all the collisions treated 
in Art. 1 

Hence the collision is so general that it demands 
two very different dramas for its full treatment. The 
ordinary drama must deal with individuals, and show 
them to us in their actions and sufferings. But the 
individual cannot embody all institutions. Only one 
of these, the Family, can be presented in its complete 
circle of individuals. The State and the Church 

particularity of itself, but with its entire content in the sphere of 
manifestation, [i. e., as Mr. Brockmeyer has explained the technical 
use of " manifestation," it includes only the sphere of the individual 
man, and not the sphere of institutions,] with the receptivity for, 
the production of, and the aspiration after the Beautiful, the Good, 
the True, within the individual himself; in the sphere of realization 
with the family, with society, and with the State ; and finally in 
the sphere of actuality with art, religion, and philosophy. Now this 
contradiction is precisely what is presented in the proposition, 'Man 
cannot know truth.' This was in the history of modern thought 
the result of Kant's philosophy, which was the philosophy of Ger- 
many at the time of the conception of Goethe's Faust." Letters on 
Faust, III. 

1 "This theme, then, is nothing more nor less than the self-con- 
sciousness in contradiction with itself, in conflict with its own 
content. Hence, if the poem is to portray this theme, this content 
in its totality, it must represent it in three spheres : first, manifes- 
tation, — Faust in conflict with himself ; second, realization, — 
Faust in conflict with the family, society, and the State ; thirdly, 
actualization, — Faust in conflict with art, religion, and philoso- 
phy." Letters on Faust, III. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



391 



cannot be presented except typically, by representative 
individuals and by allegorical masquerades. Thus 
we have a First Part of "Faust," in which the in- 
dividual is shown to us directly as unscrupulous 
pleasure-seeker, who destroys the Family through the 
consequences of his deeds, by destroying, one after 
another, all the individuals of it. Then follows a 
Second Part, in which the practical conclusion of 
"Faust" as it is embodied in the fiend Mephis- 
topheles makes its appearance in the State; then 
shows itself in Art and Eeligion, and is overcome in 
all these realms. The poet does not state for us the 
argument in logical terms, but he pictures for us 
the genesis of Faust's convictions, and their conse- 
quences when carried out. 

The work commences with the beautiful Dedica- 
tion, which expresses Goethe's objective attitude to- 
wards the great poem on the occasion of his return to 
it in 1797, after a lapse of twenty-three years. The 
Prelude on the Stage describes the three attitudes 
possible towards a work of art. Art may exist solely 
for amusement, in which case the Merry Andrew 
would be its culminating achievement. To the 
manager, Art is merely a vocation by which he gets 
his living, and hence he looks beyond the content 
to its effect in " drawing a full house." Finally, 
Art to the poet means the utterance of the highest 
inspirations, and the picturing of human nature in 
all its tragic greatness to the astonished spectator. 
The poet's idea includes amusement and terror, 



392 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



pleasure and pain, — and, above all, wisdom, derived 
from the spectacle of human nature in its entirety. 
For this includes " the whole circle of creation, 
and a progress from heaven through the world to 
hell," and also a counter movement in the opposite 
direction. 

The Prologue in Heaven gives us, in the style of 
the old miracle play, a hint of the vast design of 
" Faust/'* It takes advantage of this crude form to 
give us, in the way of an outline, a glimpse of the 
spiritual geography within which we may locate Faust. 
How the problem of evil arises in creation, through 
the very nature itself of the creative process, is sug- 
gested. Creation should reflect God, but the reflec- 
tion should take place in imperfect creatures, and 
hence be an imperfect reflection. The finite individ- 
ual, to reflect God, must be first endowed with self- 
activity or free will ; but he may use this selfishly 
as well as piously. Hence the possibility of tempta- 
tion by Mephistopheles, — the spirit of negation, ex- 
clusion, limitation, finitude, or selfishness. God has 
placed in the finite being a hunger for infinitude, — 
in short, what is called aspiration. Hence there is 
progressive development possible. This problem of 
evil is inherent in any theory of creation. For the 
finite must by self-activity come into the Divine Im- 
age. But the possession of freedom to act for itself 
involves the possibility of selfish actions which mar 
the Divine Image. The Prologue shows us the com- 
prehensiveness of the problem of " Faust." Endowed 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



393 



with infinite aspiration, (" the glimmering of heaven's 
light that he calls reason/') but with finite capacity 
of intellect and will, man cannot choose but err. He 
" uses his light to be most brutal of brutes," says 
Mephistopheles. But the Lord says, in substance : 
" Man is prone to error because he is struggling to 
satisfy this aspiration ; in his ignorance and restless- 
ness he tries one thing after another, but will never 
be content with any solution that does not satisfy 
this divine aspiration. Hence it is permitted to the 
spirit of selfishness to hold out temptations to the 
individual, offering satisfaction to him in the form of 
delights of the flesh or gratification of selfish ambition 
for power." Mephistopheles thinks that he can sat- 
isfy this divinely created soul with dust of the earth, 
and so gain permanent acquisition of it. The Lord 
knows that, though the soul can be diverted from the 
true way, it never can remain satisfied with the wages 
of sin. It will grow more and more discontented and 
restless with its lot. The possession of the glim- 
mering of heaven's light in the shape of reason will 
forever prevent any finite pleasure from sating the 
soul of Faust, and will make it impossible for Me- 
phistopheles to win his wager. 

We start, in the first scene, with the feeling of 
despair at the agnosticism w 7 hich Faust has fallen 
into. The origin of this (in his studies into alchemy) 
is shown. He comes upon the idea of a universal 
principle of relativity in nature, and concludes, like 
Herbert Spencer in recent times, that he pursues 



394 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOEIHE. 



absolute truth in vain, 1 He leaves the problem of 
nature in general, and confines his attention to the 
earth, and even here is rudely repulsed. 2 

" What mn I then capable of comprehending, if I 
cannot comprehend my earthly environment ? " " You 
may know only your trade." Infinite subdivision of 
labor is necessary in order that man, the individual, 
may find what he can master. The same subdivision 
of science is necessary in order to get a sufficiently 
small field of view to enable the individual to be- 
hold it. How absurd then to call man a Microcosm, 

1 4 'The conviction that human intelligence is incapable of ab- 
solute knowledge is one that has been slowly gaining ground as 
civilization has advanced." Spencer's First Principles, p. 68. 

2 ' ' Receptivity for and production of the truth are negated by the 
conviction that man cannot know truth, but on the wings of aspira- 
tion he sallies forth into the realm of magic, of mysticism, of sub- 
jectivity. For if reason with its mediation is impotent to create an 
object for this aspiration, let us see what emotion and imagination 
without mediation can do for subjective satisfaction. And here all 
is glory, all is freedom. The imagination seizes the totality of the 
universe, and revels in ecstatic vision. What a spectacle ! But, 
alas, a spectacle only ! How am I to know, to comprehend, the 
fountain of life, the centre of which articulates this totality ? See- 
here another generalization : the practical world as a whole [typified 
in the Erd-Geist], Ah ! that is my sphere ; here I have a firm 
footing ; here I am master ; here I command spirits. Approach 
and obey your master! ' Yes, I'm he; am Faust thy peer.' 
'Peer of the spirit thou comprehendest, — not of me.' No, in- 
deed, Mr. Faust, thou dost not include within thyself the totality 
of the practical world, but only that part thereof which thou dost 
comprehend, — only thy vocation, and hark ! ' It knocks ! ' 
death ! I see 't is my vocation indeed. ' It is my famulus ! ' " 
Letters on Faust, IY. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



395 



and boast of his power to know the truth of the 
universe ! 1 

The pain of this discovery is brought before us by 
the ensuing dialogue between Faust the aspiring seer 
and Faust in his vocation of professor; for Wagner 
the " famulus " is the type of the latter. Faust 
storms bitterly against the limitations. He knows 
the difference between hearsay and direct insight. 
Wagner is seeking the satisfaction of his soul in 
mere erudition, that collects but does not compre- 
hend ; that declaims the eloquence of others ; that 
delights in poring over parchments ; that digs in 
shallow trash, "and rejoices to find an earth-worm. 
Faust has been through that stage of culture, and 
knows that erudition alone can never satisfy. The 
teaching of what he does not thoroughly comprehend, 
or grasp together as a whole, is odious to him. 2 He 

1 " ' And this too is merely a delusion; the gTeat mystery of 
the practical world shrinks to this dimension, — a bread-professor- 
ship ! ' It would seem so ; for no theory of the practical world is 
possible without the ability to know truth. . As individual you may 
imitate the individual, as the brute his kind, and thus transmit a 
craft ; but you cannot seize the practical world in transparent forms 
and present it as an harmonious totality to your fellow man, for that 
would require that these transparent intellectual forms should pos- 
sess objective validity, — and this they have not, according to your 
conviction." Letters on Faust, IV. 

2 "And is this the mode of existence, this the reality, the only 
reality, to answer the aspiration which sought to seize the universe, 
to kindle its inmost recesses with the light of intelligence, and thus 
illumine the path of life ? Alas ! reason gave us error, — imagina- 
tion gave us illusion, — and the practical world, the will, a bread- 



896 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



perceives on his shelf a vial of poison and takes 
it down. If the Earth-Spirit scorns him, he in his 
turn can show his power to rend asunder his body, — 
the earthly concretion which holds him, or perhaps 
constitutes him. He can negate life, if he cannot 
comprehend it : " Now is the time to prove by deeds 
that human dignity quails not before the heights of 
the gods." He too can by his own act destroy his 
own form, like the pantheistic God that is above all 
form. 

But during his bitter meditations the night has 
passed and morning has come. Of all the mornings 
of the year this is Easter morning, the day of the fes- 
tival celebrating the rising of the Son of Man from 
the dead. Such a festival celebrates, therefore, the 
conviction that man survives his finite individuality 
and is immortal. If that religious belief is true doc- 
trine, it is evident that the negative doctrine — of 
the Earth-Spirit and the Absolute Eelativity of the 
Macrocosm — cannot be true. The Absolute cannot 
be a formless abstract power that makes and breaks 
forms like bubbles, but it must be an absolute Per- 
son, — yes, a divine-human Being, — who draws up 
beings out of the dust into his image, and preserves 
their individuality beyond the grave. 

professorship ! Nothing else ? Yes ; a bottle of laudanum ! Let 
us drink and rest forever ! But hold, is there nothing else really ? 
No emotional nature ? Hark ! What is that ? Easter bells ! The 
recollections of my youthful faith in a revelation ! They must be 
examined. We cannot leave yet." Letters on Faust, IV. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



397 



Faust listens to this announcement of the New 
Covenant. After the Chorus of Angels announcing 
the risen Christ, conies the Chorus of Women singing 
of the tender offices performed on pure finitude, — on 
a dead body, — and closing with the lament at the 
removal of the physical remains of the dear one. To 
this the angels respond with the comforting assurance 
of the resurrection of the individual loving and loved 
one. Then the disciples lament their separation from 
the risen one, and the angels exhort them to bring 
into reality his presence, by living his life of love and 
self-sacrifice for others. This is a complete statement 
of Christian doctrine: (1.) God is divine-human, who 
sacrifices himself for men ; (2.) Let man, filled with 
His spirit, live for others, thus making the divine 
spirit the real spirit of humanity, and thus forming 
the highest of institutions, the Church ; (3.) Man is 
immortal as an individual, but by renunciation of his 
selfish individuality he must be born again as a new 
and free individuality. 

Faust hears these " heavenly tones," this comfort- 
ing hymn, which once in other days he had heard 
with childish faith. Life had then seemed worth liv- 
ing. How does it happen that this religious doctrine 
makes life worth living, while the scientific truth has 
just now led him to suicide ? He will defer suicide 
until he can examine once again the validity of reli- 
gion. And so he goes out on Easter morning to see 
what it is that makes life worth living to his fellow 
men. 



398 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

In the scene before the Gate, he stops to listen to 
the voices that declare the various objects in which 
the people can find happiness : the hunter's lodge, 
the mill, the river tavern, the crowd, pretty girls, 
strong beer, a pipe of stinging tobacco, jolly rows 
and squabbles, etc. Faust takes note of these objects 
silently, and listens further to the citizens who dis- 
cuss town politics, and congratulate themselves on 
being out of harm's way while their fellow men in 
Turkey are not ; soldiers, whose trade is destruction 
of life and property, singing of the conquest of lofty 
castles and proud women, in the same beautiful metre 
that the angels had sung at daybreak. Faust ad- 
vances toward the crowd gathered under the lime 
trees, and remarks in a learned way on the influence 
of advancing spring in thawing the rivers and re- 
viving the herbage in the fields. So this day draws 
out the people from the vocations in which they are 
buried as in narrow tombs, and they come out and 
add color to the landscape. It is a sort of sun-myth, 
apparently, to Faust. He is glad, however, to think 
of a resurrection from the narrowness of one's voca- 
tion, on which the speech of the Earth-Spirit had led 
him to reflect so bitterly. As he approaches, all 
.crowd around him, to show him the greatest honor 
as the wise physician who has saved their lives from 
the pestilence. Wagner by his side congratulates him 
on his reception, and envies his happiness at being so 
reverenced. The Wagner element in Faust must have 
been greatly delighted ; but the doubting spirit of cul- 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



399 



ture in him at once reacts. He sees the other side : 
"My father and I raged through these vales and 
mountains worse than any pestilence with our em- 
pirical remedies ; the patients died, and no one asked 
who got well ; and now I must live to hear the reck- 
less murderers praised ! " 

Although he finds no happiness in the recognition 
of his power over his fellow men, he finds in it a sug- 
gestion. If I, Faust, cannot know truth, I can see at 
least what an opportunity for selfish gratification it 
affords me. If the Earth-Spirit scorns me and sends 
me back to my vocation, I can certainly use my voca- 
tion as the means of procuring physical pleasure. To 
be sure, such a life for the mere sake of living is a 
dog's life. For if a man uses his highest spiritual pow- 
ers merely for " getting a living/' (meaning by that 
expression procuring his food, drink, clothing, and 
shelter by it,) he does not live for the highest ends, 
but makes the highest ends quite subordinate to lower 
aims. Wagner's view of the object of life seems to 
be a dog's view, or rather he seems to make his voca- 
tion into a dog which he keeps for his service and 
comfort. He accordingly takes home with him to his 
study the thought of the dog view of life. 1 With the 

1 To "Wagner it is immaterial whether he knows what he needs, 
provided he sees the day when the man who has been worse to the 
people than the very pestilence itself receives public honors; but to 
Faust, to the man really in earnest, — who is not satisfied when he 
has squared life with life, and obtained zero for a result, or who 
does not merely live to make a living, but demands a rational end 
for life, and, in default of that rational end, spurns life itself, — to 



400 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



poodle he returns to the study pondering the view of 
life that proposes to live for the sake of living. He 
now proceeds to take up the question which had oc- 
curred to him on hearing the bells on Easter morning : 
Is a divine revelation possible to a being who cannot 
know the truth ? 

The verse of St. John's Gospel that reveals the 
nature of God as divine-human from all eternity is, 
of course, the special passage to examine. In that 

such a man this whole scene possesses little significance indeed. It 
possesses, however, some significance, even for him ! For if it is 
indeed true that man cannot know truth, — that the high aspira- 
tion of his soul has no object, — then this scene demonstrates, at 
least, that Faust possesses power over the practical world. If he 
cannot know this world, he can at least swallow a considerable 
portion of it, and this scene demonstrates that he can exercise 
a great deal of choice as to the parts selected: do you see this 
conviction ? 

" Do you see this conviction ? Do you see this dog ? Consider 
it well : what is it, think you ? Do you perceive how it encircles us 
nearer and nearer, — becomes more and more certain, and, if I mis- 
take not, a luminous emanation of gold, of honor, of power, follows 
its wake ? It seems to me as if it drew soft magic rings, as future 
fetters, round our feet ! See, the circles become smaller and 
smaller, — 't is almost a certainty, — 't is already near: come, come 
home with us ! The temptation here spread before us by the poet, 
to consider the dog * well, ' is almost irresistible ; but all we can say 
in this place is, that if one will look upon what is properly called a 
vocation in civil society, eliminate from it all higher ends and mo- 
tives other than the simple one of making a living, — no matter with 
what pomp and circumstance, — no doubt he will readily recognize 
the poodle. But we must hasten to the studio to watch further 
developments, for the conflict is not as yet decided. We are still to 
examine the possibility of a divine revelation to man, who cannot 
know truth." Letters on Faust, V. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



401 



verse it is revealed that God becomes a creature, and 
manifests himself to creatures. The revelation is 
made in the Greek language with the word Logos. 
One might say that this word must have meant 
something to the Greek mind, or else it would not 
have revealed the Christian idea expressed by it. 
But, at all events, no one can translate it into his 
own language unless he understands it. The die- 

o o 

tionary meaning of Logos is " word," " reason," etc. 
Faust tries " word," but at once reflects that a word 
cannot be a word before it has a meaning, and hence 
cannot have been " in the beginning." Logos must 
therefore be translated " meaning," or " sense." But 
a meaning is not a power, and hence cannot origi- 
nate anything ; if the meaning were the first, nothing 
would have followed. An energy is required ; hence 
Logos must be translated " Power." Further re- 
flection discovers that nothing begins until a power 
acts; hence for "power" must be substituted " deed." 
There is a real beginning only in a deed. But, alas ! 
Faust sees that he has been enabled to find the right 
word solely by his intellect. If he cannot understand 
the sense of the original by rethinking it, he cannot 
find words into which to translate it. Therefore, if 
he cannot know truth, he cannot understand a reve- 
lation of it, and hence there can be no revelation of 
it to him. 1 

1 "And for this purpose, — our newly acquired conviction that 
we possess power over the practical world, although not as yet in a 
perfectly clear form before us, comfortably lodged behind the stove, 

26 



402 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



The poodle idea gets restless during this examina- 
tion. It has become a serious matter. If I cannot 
know truth, I can by my power of intellect use my 
fellow men for my pleasure. I can take the world 
for my oyster. Unscrupulous self-gratification at the 
expense of my fellow men is fiendish. While to ply 
one's vocation merely for the sake of making a living 
is only the idea of a dog, or any other animal, to live 
and enjoy myself at the expense of the injury of my 
fellows is demonic. Here is the transmutation of the 

where it properly belongs, — we take down the original text of 
the New Testament in order to realize its meanng in our own 
loved mother tongue. It stands written, ' In the beginning was 
the Word.' Word ? Word ? Never ! Meaning it ought to be ! 
Meaning what ? Meaning ? No, it is Power ! No, Deed ! Word, 
meaning, power, deed, — which is it ? Alas ! how am I to know, 
unless I can know truth ? 'T is even so, our youthful recollections 
dissolve in mist, into thin air, and nothing is left us but our newly 
acquired conviction, the restlessness of which during this examina- 
tion has undoubtedly not escaped your attention. * Be quiet, 
there, behind the stove.' * See here, poodle, one of us two has to 
leave this room.' What, then, is the whole content of this con- 
viction, which, so long as there was the hope of a possibility of a 
worthy object for our aspirations, seemed so despicable ? What is 
it that governs the practical world of finite motives, the power that 
adapts means to ends, regardless of a final, of an infinite end ? Is 
it not the Understanding? and although Keason — in its search 
after the final end, with its perfect system of absolute means, of in- 
finite motives and interests — begets subjective chimeras, is it not 
demonstrated that the understanding possesses objective validity ? 
Nay, look upon this dog well • does it not swell into colossal pro- 
portions? — is no dog at all, in fact, but the very power that holds 
absolute sway over the finite and negative, — the understanding 
itself, — Mephistopheles in proper form." Letters on Faust, V. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



403 



dog into a devil. Out of the poodle comes Mephis- 
topheles, and Faust forswears all aspirations for divine 
things, making a compact to renounce them, provided 
he can be sated with earthly pleasure. 

The exorcism of the demon uses the magic formulae, 
but with a subtle reference to an underlying kernel 
of meaning. The spirit is not one of earth (Incubus 
or Kobold), air (Sylph), fire (Salamander), or water 
(Undine) ; it does not belong to nature at all, in fact, 
but to spirit. It is the intellect used simply for itself 
and against all else, and is therefore "the spirit that 
denies." The sign that exorcises is the name of the 
" vilely transpierced " One, — the Divine Being w T ho 
took upon himself the sins and punishment of others, 
and gave the infinite exemplar of unselfishness. This 
renunciation for the sake of others is the test that 
reveals the character of any form of sinful nature. 
Mephistopheles believes that all that is ought to be 
destroyed. In this respect he partakes of the na- 
ture of the formless god of Pantheism. All forms 
arise out of Substance by negation,' and all return 
into the formless substance by means of a second 
negation. 

All form is Maya, or illusion, says the Hindoo. 
But Mephistopheles is not generally so abstract in his 
views as he expresses himself on his first appearance 
to Faust. He usually " opposes his cold devil's fist, 
clenched in impotent malice against the beneficent 
creating power," as Faust is made to suggest. While 
the Creative Word delights in nursing into being the 



404 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

myriad forms of nature, and in drawing them up by 
evolution into human beings, His image, with whom 
to share his blessedness, Mephistopheles, on the con- 
trary, inspired by a spirit of envy which is the an- 
tithesis of this divine altruism, wishes to beat back 
into chaos all that has come into being. He wishes 
to share with no one else, and hence realizes the 
ideal of pure selfishness. 

In the compact made with Mephistopheles in the 
following scene, the stipulations are such that Faust 
is certain to escape, if he retains any aspiration. If 
the delights of the senses can please him to satiety, 
of course he has lost his soul to the Evil One. " If 
ever I stretch myself in quiet on a bed of ease, if thou 
canst cheat me with enjoyment, be that day my last. 
. . . If ever I say to the passing moment, ' Stay, for 
thou art fair/ then mayest thou cast me into chaills. ,, 
But in his quest of happiness that does not turn into 
pain, he will pass entirely out of the realm of pleas- 
ures of appetite and passion, and come to those of 
ambition and power; these he will pass by to the 
pleasures of culture in art and literature, which he 
will desert for the final happiness of laboring for 
the good of his fellow men. Arrived at altruism, he 
has arrived at what is diametrically opposed to the 
nature of the demon with whom he has made a com- 
pact. Mephistopheles must satisfy him, then, by giv- 
ing him such happiness as heaven affords, — that is 
to say, the happiness reached through unselfish devo- 
tion to others. This fiend must serve him, therefore, 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



405 



and assist him in his benevolent undertakings, until 
he wellnigh destroys his own diabolic character. 

The compact signed, the next question is how to 
enjoy himself. Faust's good impulses would lead him 
to share the pain and pleasure of humanity, and thus 
widen his own life by adding to it the life of the race. 
But his selfishness, incarnated in Mephistopheles, at 
once rebukes him, and exhorts him to the use of all 
as a means of his pleasure. 1 He despises all theories, 
all reflections on the regulative principles of human 
conduct, and wishes Faust to give them up. The 
gibes of Mephistopheles against philosophy and school 
learning are taken in good faith as Goethe's best wis- 
dom by many readers. This adoption of the code of 

1 " 'Away with this striving after the impossible ! What though, 
your body is your own, is that which I enjoy less mine ? If I can 
pay for six brave steeds, are they not mine, with all their power ? 
I run as if on four and twenty legs, and am held to be of some con- 
sequence. Away, therefore : leave off your cogitating, — away into 
the world ! I tell you, a man who speculates is like a brute led by 
evil genii in circles round and round upon a withered heath, while 
close at hand smile beauteous pastures green. Just look at this 
place. Call you this living, — to plague yourself and the poor boys 
to death with ennui ? Leave that to your good neighbor, the worthy 
Mr. Bookworm. Why should you worry yourself threshing such 
straw ? ' The extraordinary good sense of this advice is so apparent, 
that it cannot be without some immediate effect, which we perceive 
in the scene where the different studies are reviewed by the aid of 
its radiance concentrated into 

' All theory, my friend, is gray, 
But green the golden tree of life,' 

as the focal point. With this final adieu to the past, we congratu- 
late ourselves upon the ' new career ' ! " Letters on Faust, VI. 



406 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



the Evil One is itself quite as comical as anything in 
the wit of Mephistopheles. Goethe of course recog- 
nized this in its fulness ; for he makes Mephistopheles 
soliloquize after the departure of Faust : " Only let 
him despise reason and science, the highest strength 
that man possesses, and even if he had not contracted 
himself to the Devil he would notwithstanding go to 
destruction." 

The scene with the Student emphasizes the Mephis- 
tophelian view of school education. It satirizes logic 
and grammar, chemistry and anatomy, philosophy and 
jurisprudence, theology and medicine, suggesting sens- 
uality as the proper substitute for earnest pursuit of 
art and science. That Goethe himself passed through 
all these stages of Mephistophelic opinion there can 
be no doubt. He was a Titan when at college in 
Leipzig. He attacked institutions again and again 
in his early life. But he outgrew this spirit of revolt 
by degrees. The French Revolution is the great out- 
ward event that had its reflection in the souls of the 
brilliant youth of that epoch. Goethe records his 
final verdict on that frame of mind by putting its 
favorite expressions into the mouth of Mephistopheles, 
In the passage of his Autobiography above referred to, 
(Book VIII. p. 300, Bohn's Translation,) we can see 
how he had surmounted his own speculative doubts 
of the warranty of civilization by the study of Neo- 
Platonism and Mysticism, very soon after his return 
from Leipzig and before he conceived his Faust. It 
must be supposed, however, that the very general and 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



407 



abstract character of his conviction rendered necessary 
a long time to leaven the concrete details of his view 
of life. In the course of his great literary work of 
art, we are given to understand his final classification 
of all mental attitudes towards the world. 

All being ready, Faust's companion spreads the 
mantle 1 with proper care, and they are off on their 
journey. 

Now the question arises, What shall be the con- 
tent of the first scene in which this new conviction 
of Faust is to be realized ? Obvious enough, — the 
Easter morning, with its crowds of people going gayly 
forth to enjoy their holiday, will suggest idleness, and 
"loafing, 5 ' as it is called, which, however, cannot be 
endured in solitude. There must be idle company to 
make idleness palatable. But an idle company are 
not able to enjoy their leisure purely for itself; they 
must forget themselves by telling amusing stories. 
But really artistic talent cannot be displayed without 
labor; the easiest wit is that lowest species which 
deals in profanity and obscenity. Hence we have 
scurrilous songs full of scandal. The choicest morsel 
for the idler is scandal relating to the established 
order of things, — the .government, the Church, the 
industries of the community, the morals of those in 

1 " 'What about the. immediate start, conveyance, etc. V Well, 
I suppose Faust is not the only one that has travelled on the 
quality of his cloth ! ' To fly through the air on Mephisto's cloak,' 
sounds very poetic, but to pass in society upon the strength of ap- 
pearance is such an every-day occurrence that it is quite prosaic." 
Letters on Faust, YI. 



408 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



power. But this does not suffice to dissipate the 
ennui of such a company. There is no recourse but 
to benumb consciousness by strong drink ; this alone 
is effective, for it loosens the hold of the senses on 
reality, and substitutes a world of illusion : " False 
form and word ! change sense and place ! be here, be 
there ! " Each one sees a beautiful country, with 
vineyards and grapes close at hand, and when error 
looses the bandage from their eyes they find them- 
selves in the attitude of deadly quarrel, with knives 
drawn. This is truly " a devil's mode of jesting," and 
it does not seem to possess any attractions for Faust. 1 
The next scene brings Faust to the Witches 1 
Kitchen, whose contents are represented symboli- 

1 " We witness a peculiar social phenomenon in Auerbach's 
Cellar, where we have arrived in time to find our hero joining in 
the chorus 

'We are as happy as cannibals. 
Nay, as five hundred hogs,' — 

or, if not our hero, Mephisto for him, — for you will notice that 
Faust says only, * Good evening, gentlemen,' and ' I should like 
to leave now,' during the whole scene, — the very leader of the 
crowd in wit, song, and wine. Nay, as to the latter, he cannot re- 
frain from giving them a little touch of his chemical science, which 
can dispense with the old grape-wine process, and still give perfect 
satisfaction to his customers, — a fact of some importance, one would 
suppose, to the landlord. And thus it would appear that our hero 
is not left to trust entirely to the quality of his cloth for the practi- 
cal wherewithal. But the little * Feuer-luft,' which one would at 
first have been inclined to interpret Fame, resolves itself into * fire- 
water,' or rather the art to make this, to work the miracle of the 
wedding feast at Galilee on the principles of natural science." 
Letters on Faust, VII. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



409 



cally, as being too gross, or else too complex and prosy, 
for literal description. It would seem that the next 
experiment after the idlers holiday would be the 
attempt to find happiness in fashionable society. 
Isolate this phase of life, and make it the supreme 
object for man, and is it any more than a witches' 
kitchen ? Its ball-rooms, late suppers, empty talk, 
and the catering for it with food and drink less 
adapted to satisfy hunger than to inflame passion, the 
clothing that does not clothe, the cosmetics and other 
means to manufacture forms of youth and beauty out of 
ugliness, — all these seem to be typified. But there is 
also gaming with dice, lotteries, fortune-telling, and the 
getting of riches by chance, — which also very accu- 
rately characterizes the frame of mind which lives for 
the world of mere fashion and appearance. The same 
principle carried into literature is satirized by putting 
it into the mouths of the apes : " We speak and we 
see ; we hear and we rhyme ; and if we are lucky, 
and if things fit, 't is thoughts, and we 're thinking." 
Close in sequence, after games of chance and lotteries, 
follow peculation and forgeries by aid of the witches' 
multiplication-table, which can, when necessary, 

"■Of one make ten, 
And two let be, 

And three make even, — then art thou rich." 

" The high power of science hidden from all comes 
to him who thinks not," says the witch who presides 
over the kitchen. Here too Faust sees in the magic 
mirror of fashion beautiful forms ; but if he approaches 



410 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



too near, he perceives that they are manufactured (by 
the milliner ?). The potation brewed in this kitchen 
seems to be a species of philter, a sort of " beggars' 
broth," which inflames the sensual passions. 

All this pleases Faust no better than the wine 
cellar. He thinks the fashionable apes and their 
conversation " the most disgusting I ever saw," and 
" thoroughly abominates the absurd apparatus, these 
frantic gestures, and repulsive cheats," and his head 
splits at the nonsense as of a " hundred idiots declaim- 
ing in full chorus." 1 

Now commences the Margaret episode. From the 

1 The " Letters on Faust" present a different interpretation of 
this scene ; but I prefer to follow an interpretation given by their 
author in an earlier course of lectures. The following remarks also, 
from Letter YIIL, contain hints that point in the direction I have 
followed : " Owing to the age of the man, and the practical incon- 
venience he may experience therefrom in his new career, 

4 For idle dalliance too old, 
Too young to be without desire/ 

he would find it, no doubt, convenient to decrease the one and in- 
crease the other. For in this new career, the strength and number 
of his desires are an essential element, especially when there is every 
prospect of ample means for their gratification. As regards external 
appearance, that can readily be managed by a judicious use of cos- 
metics, the tailor's art, and kindred appliances. But the physical 
desires, the sexual passions, for example, require youth to yield full 
fruition. Proper culture, however, not to mention aphrodisiacs, will 
do much, even in this direction." Other commentators seem to 
prefer the interpretation given in the " Letters on Faust." A. Wy- 
sard (London, 1883, The Intellectual and Moral Problem of Goethe's 
Faust), for example, says : " Mephisto takes him to the Witches' 
Kitchen, that is to say, to those places of vulgar sin where the mystery 
of love is prostituted to the service of degrading voluptuousness," etc. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



411 



drinking saloon and the life of fashion, the drama pro- 
ceeds to the institution of the family, realized in the 
persons of Margaret, her mother, and her brother. 
Hitherto we have had no tragedy, but only a strug- 
gle within the mind of Faust. His conviction has 
taken the shape embodied by Mephistopheles, and in 
a few short, swift scenes we are plunged into a terrible 
collision with the external world. First in order are 
the scenes which show us the meeting of Margaret 
just coming from the cathedral ; then her room and 
the casket ; the promenade, and Faust in love ; the 
neighbor's house and the craft of Mephistopheles ; 
the street scene and the resolution taken ; the garden 
scene and the garden arbor. Then comes the scene 
called " Forest and Cavern," wherein Goethe has 
painted a powerful reaction in the soul of Faust. 
His emotional nature revolts against the evil influence 
that drags him onwards, and he tries by absence to 
subdue his lawless passion. Under the temporary 
influence of a pure love, he finds himself likewise 
in harmony with creation once more, and he recog- 
nizes his " brothers in the still wood, the air, the 
water." 

But Mephistopheles finally overcomes his virtuous 
scruples by suggesting the picture of Margaret pining 
away with longing for him, — a picture realized in 
the next scene, in Margaret's room, where we hear 
her sing, " My peace is gone/' — expressing the fatal 
attraction which draws her like a night-moth into 
the flame. 



412 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

In Martha's garden we see them after Faust's re- 
turn. Margaret is anxious in regard to his religion. 
Faust parries her questions with a series of answers 
drawn from his pantheistical system of thought. 
M. " Do you believe in God ? " F. " Who would dare 
to answer yes or no to such a question ? The world 
exists, and the heavens ; a vast correlated system of 
energies is alike revealed and hidden by these phe- 
nomena, which we see and which we are. For we are 
products of nature and moved irresistibly by its ulti- 
mate force. Call this immediate feeling of love, which 
moves thee and me, God, love, heart, or bliss, — it is 
all one. I have no name for it. It is the all- 
embracing and sustaining unity of the universe which 
takes on these myriad forms, but is above and beyond 
them all. Feeling is all in all. Hence let us yield 
to it." Poor Margaret is confused by the technical 
expressions of philosophy, to which she is not accus- 
tomed. She admits that it is all fine and good, like 
the words of the priest, but for all that there is some- 
thing wrong about it, for it lacks Christianity. She 
means to express by this her knowledge that the 
Church condemns it all. She has seen that Faust 
does not honor the holy sacraments, or at least does 
not desire any participation in them. Faust thinks 
himself an " advanced liberal " who is willing that 
each should have his own belief. The spirit of the 
Macrocosm is void of all form, and hence is neither 
personalty nor any physical force, but indifferent to 
all existing things, and also indifferent to all moral 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



413 



distinctions and religious ordinances. It is in com- 
plete harmony with the collision which produces the 
entire movement of the drama that Faust shall put 
forward these agnostic arguments to overcome the re- 
ligious scruples of Margaret. A God so transcendent 
as to be indifferent to all distinctions cannot be known 
as to his will and purposes ; but through our feeling 
we may know Him in the form of immediate impulse. 
" Obey impulse and leave the talk about divine com- 
mandments to dishonest priests." The conclusion is 
forthcoming : " You see this vial ? only three drops 
in your mother's drink will envelop her in a deep 
but pleasant sleep." 

In view of this obvious interpretation of the scene, 
we are filled with amazement at the opinion of Mr. 
Lewes, that " grander, deeper, holier thoughts are not 
to be found in poetry " ! But what shall we say to 
those who insist that this passage expresses " Goethe's 
creed " ? When Goethe called himself a polytheist 
as poet and artist, a pantheist as a student of nature, 
and a theist in his moral and spiritual nature, it is 
easy to understand how these seemingly contradictory 
predicates are harmonized. As a poet, all nature is 
personified, and is full of correspondences to the soul. 
The poet animates and personifies objects direct, and 
is essentially on the standpoint of Homer and the 
ancient polytheism. Again, in natural science rela- 
tivity becomes the chief category, and every object is 
traced out into some previous condition by its relations 
and processes. This interrelation points towards an 



414 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



ultimate unity of all, indifferent to particular forms, 
but itself a persistent energy. Here is a pantheistic 
standpoint. But the necessity of self-activity in the 
ultimate energy brings before us the duplicate unity 
which we have in self-conscious being, and so we re- 
turn from Pantheism to Theism even in the science of 
nature. Therefore Goethe in his letter to . Jacobi ad- 
mits that he " needs a personal God for his personal 
nature as a moral and spiritual man." But if any 
evidence is sought for Goethe's ripest convictions, it 
must be found in his greatest and maturest work, the 
" Faust." This scene should convince us that Goethe 
did not esteem highly any religion founded on the 
indifferent supreme being of Pantheism. 1 

1 I give in this view substantially Mr. Brockmeyer's interpreta- 
tion of the significance of Faust's creed, as I remember it in his 
lectures ; it is not given in his " Letters." The following quotations 
from the latter are in place here. 

"This young woman, clad in purity and faith, is met at the 
temple of the living God, at once the primary source and the still 
existing refuge of the sacredness of the family relation. The severely 
realistic character of Gretchen, therefore, is determined by the 
theme ; and the scene where she relates her daily occupations of 
cooking, washing, sweeping, etc., besides the exquisite motive which 
the poet employs to transfigure its prosaic commonplace, ought not 
to be wanting." Letters on Faust, IX. 

" That the family relation is impossible under the conviction of 
Faust, or that an existing family should be destroyed (the mother 
poisoned, the child drowned, the brother slain, and the sister stand 
before the judgment-seat of God as the self- acknowledged author, 
cause, or whatever name you may give to the connection which she 
had with these effects), by a man's giving practical effect to the con- 
victions of Faust, is acknowledged and realized by the general con- 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



415 



The scene at the Fountain reflects in a " severely 
realistic " form the popular ethical sense before which 
Margaret's conscience now condemns her. The scenes 
increase in tragic earnestness. At the shrine of the 
Mater Dolorosa she appeals for rescue from shame 
and death. In the night scene we see the reflection 
of the deed of Faust in the consciousness of the 
brother of Margaret. Valentine attacks the serenaders 
and is slain. Faust and Mephistopheles flee from the 
country, and w r e may suppose they go to scenes of 
dissipation in the great city where we meet them on 
Walpurgis Night. The Cathedral scene follows. Is 
Margaret at the funeral of her murdered brother, or 
rather, perhaps, of her mother ? The critics find diffi- 
culties in either case. Valentine in his soliloquy made 
no allusion to his mother. The fact that the accusing 
spirit asks, " Pray'st thou for thy mother's soul ? " seems 
to intimate that it is her funeral. The Dies Tree is 
sung as the " Sequence for the Dead" in the Catholic 
burial service. This fact makes one of the two con- 
tingencies probable. But it was more poetical to leave 
this matter a mere suggestion. It increases our horror 
to remember that, w T hen we saw Margaret coming 
from the cathedral on a former occasion, she was " so 
innocent that she had nothing to confess." The evil 
spirit (Boser Geist), or the accusing spirit, personifying 
Conscience, suggests the contrast to Margaret : " How 

sciousness of the age, as is abundantly proved by the effect which 
the part of the work under consideration has produced." Letters 
on Faust, IX. 



416 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



different was it with thee," etc. When the organ 
peals and the Chorus sings, the accusing spirit con- 
tinues to comment on the verses of the judgment 
hymn. The first, sixth, and seventh verses are given 
in the text. The spirit, however, translates the sub- 
stance of the second (" Horror seizes thee ! "), third 
( u The trumpet sounds ! the graves tremble ! "), and 
fourth (" Thy heart from its ashes flames up again in 
torment "). The fifth verse has the same content as 
the sixth, and the accuser echoes the sense of both : 
" Hide thyself ! Sin and shame never remain con- 
cealed. Air ? Light ? Woe to thee ! " Then at the 
seventh verse, which brings to a climax the helpless- 
ness of the sinner, the spirit reminds her that she can 
claim no advocate on that day when the just are 
scarcely sure of their defence : " The glorified turn 
their faces from thee ; the pure ones shudder to offer 
thee their hands. Woe ! " The situation represented 
here is sublime and terrible beyond all others in this 
drama. 1 

Here is the finite before the infinite, the innocent 
led astray into crime and sin, and brought before the 
last tribunal. A full consciousness of this judgment 
takes possession of Margaret while her reason is yet 
unshaken, though her soul has been tried by suc- 
cessive shocks. The pathos of the scene reaches its 
highest point through the fact that the trial and con- 
demnation are wholly unseen by the world. An ex- 

1 Mr. Brockmeyer pronounces it the most tragic scene in all 
literature, for the reasons stated. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



417 



ternal trial before her fellow men could not be so 
terrible as this judgment by her accusing conscience 
while the holy Chorus announces the eternal edicts. 
The spectator would cry out at once against any ex- 
ternal court that condemned so dreadfully the victim 
of fiendish conspiracy. It is she alone who can im- 
agine that the spirits of light avert their faces and 
refuse their helping hands. The closing scene of the 
Second Part of Faust shows us the counterpart to this 
scene in the cathedral. 

From this scene before the heavenly judgment we 
descend in the following to the region of hell. Faust 
and Mephistopheles have fled from justice, and we 
are to seek them, — perhaps in Paris at some Jardin 
Mabille, — certainly this is the type described in the 
Walpurgis Night. In the celebration on the Brocken 
are to be found all manner of correspondences with 
what is infernal in human character. Spiritual jays, 
owls, mice, fireflies, will-o'-the-wisps, vermin, all as- 
semble with the witches on the wild desert at the 
top of the Brocken. It is a realm beyond the border, 
hence the place of outlaws, the criminal realm. Hu- 
man savagery celebrates its Witches' Sabbath on this 
mountain top, lighted up, as is well known, by Mam- 
mon. For Mammon is wealth used in sensuality and 
other selfish pleasure. A spiritual storm rages there, 
the elements all in collision. 

Sitting around dying embers at the outskirts of the 
crowd, Mephistopheles comes up with the sore-heads. 
These are they who have lived for selfish pleasure, 

27 



418 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

and now retain their passions and ambition, but have 
worn out their capacity for enjoyment. They con- 
sider themselves most unjustly treated by the world. 
A general thinks his nation ungrateful for his ser- 
vices ; a minister thinks that all things go badly 
since he left the cabinet ; an unsuccessful author 
complains that people do not read sensible works 
any longer. Mephistopheles mocks them all : " Since 
my own cask has run down to the lees, I feel that the 
world also is near its end." Then Lilith and the ob- 
scene witches. But in the midst of dissipation Faust 
thinks of Margaret, and is haunted by the sight of 
a " pale, fair girl, standing alone and far off." " She 
drags herself but slowly from the place, and seems to 
move with fettered feet. I must own she seems to 
me to resemble poor Margaret. . . . How strangely 
does a single red line, no thicker than a knife, adorn 
that lovely neck ! " Faust does not wait for the Inter- 
mezzo, — a " new performance " that is given on the 
Brocken. It is the counterpart of the Prelude on the 
stage, and shows us the Walpurgis Mght in literature. 
The spirit of Mephistopheles is portrayed in its va- 
rious literary incarnations. The plot is the quarrel 
between the two ideals in art typified by Oberon and 
Titania. Art is either for the revelation of the divine, 
or for amusement and to make a living. 

Faust learns the fate of Margaret, "long wretch- 
edly astray on the face of the earth, and now im- 
prisoned and under sentence of death." A reaction 
sets in, which Mephistopheles is not able to meet, as 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



419 



before, on the scene of the " Dreary Day." The in- 
dignant reply of Faust to Mephistopheles's u She is 
not the first/' is annihilating in its force. They pass 
through the " open field/' where the gibbet stands, to 
the dungeon. Margaret is discovered insane. In her 
ravings she lives over asfain the tragic moments of 
her history, and anticipates in her fantasy the scene 
of the execution, which forms the climax. But even 
in the presence of the scaffold she repels all offers of 
succor from the conspirator against her peace. She 
exclaims on seeing Mephistopheles : " What rises up 
from the threshold there ? He ! He ! Send him 
away ! What does he want in this holy place ? He 
seeks me." She appeals to the judgment of God 
against the fiend. To be saved from the gallows and 
from God's judgment by the interposition of the Evil 
One is to be lost forever. She prefers the solemn 
human ceremony that deprives her of life, to the life 
of an outcast. Goethe expresses this sense of the 
substantial nature of social life in institutions, as con- 
trasted with mere individual life, in Margaret's reply 
to Faust's " Only consent ! the door lies open " : 
"What avails it flying? They will waylay me! It 
is so miserable to be obliged to beg one's living, 
and with a bad conscience too. How wretched to 
wander in a foreign land, and after all be rearrested ! " 
The very thought drives her into her ravings again. 

At her refusal to be rescued, Mephistopheles pro- 
nounces the words, "She is judged," meaning that she 
has preferred to accept the fate decreed by the court. 



420 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



But a voice from above says, " She is saved." As 
Faust hastens out of the dungeon, he hears the voice 
of Margaret calling his name. The voice comes 
fainter and fainter to his ears as his distance in- 
creases. He joins Mephistopheles and " disappears." 

The First Part of Faust thus ends negatively. It is 
deeply tragic, but not in the usual manner. It is not 
the hero's death that we see. He does not collide with 
institutions and go down. His innocent victim is the 
one who suffers, and the guilty one escapes. In this 
defect we see the necessity for a Second Part. The 
old miracle play, like the Don Juan epos, makes the 
hero meet his doom in hell flames. But Goethe pre- 
serves Faust in order to treat the theme exhaustively, 
and finally solve it affirmatively. Thus far we have 
had a subjective conflict within Faust's mind, and an 
objective conflict with a single institution, the family. 
Faust's practical resolution to make the world his 
oyster has not resulted in happiness. On the con- 
trary, when Margaret paints the last scene at the 
block, Faust says, " Oh that I had never been born ! " 
His emotional nature, the very part of him that 
hungers for the pleasure of gratification, evidently 
is not constituted so as to adapt itself to the theory 
of Mephistopheles. He cannot be made happy by 
unscrupulous selfishness that heeds not another's 
pain. 1 

1 "As the result of the subjective collision, we had the conclu- 
sion, that, if man cannot know truth, he can enjoy sensual pleasure. 
Taking this for the principle of our action, we entered the world of 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



421 



Many persons affect to admire the first part of 
Faust who do not find any necessity for the second 
part. They do not duly consider that the first part 
by itself is a monstrosity, judged by the standard of 
works of art. What drama or what novel would al- 
low its hero to destroy an entire family of innocent 
people, and yet escape due punishment at the hand 
of his fellow men ? Even the puppet play w T as care- 
ful to punish Faust in the fires of hell ; but Goethe's 
Faust, in its first part, does not show us the hand of 
society avenging itself on the true criminal, nor does 
it, on the other hand, show the conditions of 'the com- 
pact with Mephistopheles fulfilled, so that the soul 
of Faust is in danger of forfeiture. 

With all these crimes, Faust has not found his mo- 
ment of happiness which he can bid " Stay, for thou 
art fair." Mephistopheles cannot claim him, for he 
has not gratified him with sensual delight, according 
to the terms of the bond. Faust's soul has not be- 
come wholly devilish, because he has wished to save 
Margaret from her fate, and, failing in that, is plunged 
in deep remorse. Remorse, it is true, is not the pun- 
ishment required by a work of art. The punishment 
should come from the hand of society to satisfy the 
conditions of a drama. But remorse is sufficient in 
this play to cheat Mephistopheles of his due. Hence, 

reality, and lo! it crumbles under our feet. Not life, not perpetuity 
of the race, but death, — blank nothingness ; the conclusion reads, 
' If man cannot know truth, then he cannot exist.' " Letters on 
Faust, IX. 



422 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



both the external and internal conditions of the play 
demand the continuation of the drama into another 
part. 1 

When setting out on the journey Mephistopheles 
names the destination : " The little world and the 
great world we will see." The little world contains 
what may be represented directly in its proper per- 
sons. All the members of the family may be brought 
before us in the drama ; but we cannot see in like 
manner all the members of a state or of civil society ; 

1 " The destruction of the family and the preservation of the de- 
stroyer will hardly pass for a satisfactory solution, either logical or 
artistic. To regard the poem, however, in this light, would be our 
own act, and the consequent difficulty one of our own creation. For 
this would be an attempt to make rather than to read the poem. 
And whatever merit or demerit might attend the undertaking, it 
would hardly be fair to attribute either the one or the other to the 
author of Faust. For in this poem we have for our theme, ' the 
self-conscious intelligence in conflict with itself, — with its entire 
content.' Not the content with itself, but the self-conscious intel- 
ligence on the one side, and its content on the other. Included 
within this content [as a single phase of it], we have the institution 
of the family. Hence, the collision presented is one not inherent in 
this institution, for that involves as its presupposition the valid ex- 
istence thereof, [i.e. a collision in the family presupposes the family,] 
but between the family and its negation. It is, therefore, not an in- 
dependent, but a subordinate collision. . . . Since the family is only 
a part of this content, the conflict is not exhausted by the destruc- 
tion of the family, any more than it was exhausted at the end of the 
subjective collision which resulted in the destruction of the rational 
vocation of Faust, and delivered him over to the guidance of the 
understanding with its finite aims, — sensual indulgence. Hence, 
no solution is presented [in this First Part], or is possible as yet." 
Letters on Faust, IX. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



423 



nor can art and religion be presented except in a typi- 
cal manner to us. Two different modes of art, there- 
fore, prevail in the Faust. Objects of universal scope 
and significance, like nature and humanity as a whole, 
or like the process of empirical science, the realm of 
philosophical ideas, or the history of the Christian 
religion, are represented in types or mythological 
figures, such as Dante has used in the Terrestrial 
Paradise, where the elements of the Church and their 
history are emblematically bodied forth. Thus we 
have such forms as the Erdgeist, the Macrocosm, the 
dog, the Homunculus, the Mothers, and the closing 
scene in Heaven, all adumbrating what cannot be 
presented to us immediately, like the family, whose 
members we may see and hear. 1 

Mephistopheles is the mythological impersonation 
of unscrupulous selfishness, which sacrifices others for 
its own greed. It is the human subjective counter- 
part of the Earth-Spirit, who is conceived to create a 
world of human beings, and endow them with aspira- 
tions for infinite truth, but who withholds from them 
all possibility of attainment, — who is, in short, a 
birth and a grave for all individuals. If man wor- 
ship such a god, and take him as a model on which 
to mould his owm character, he will of course become a 
" spirit that denies." He will not feel himself bound 
to respect any finite particular beings like men, nor 

1 This is an epitome of Brockmeyer's view, given at length in his 
lectures (unpublished). He holds that presentative art is used 
chiefly in the First Part, but representative art in the Second Part. 



424 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



any being subordinate to him, because such are not 
respected by the Absolute. He will respect only the 
great negative powers of nature, over which he can 
exercise no control, and which therefore resemble in 
this regard the Absolute. Mephistopheles justifies 
himself, accordingly, by saying that all things called 
forth into being out of the void are destined for de- 
struction again by the same pantheistic energy that 
created them, and therefore " it were better had they 
never been created." Like the Earth-Spirit, too, he 
has reserved the flame for his element. Hence, one 
might trace out the logical connection between the 
Earth-Spirit and Mephistopheles, — the former con- 
ceived as the objective universal process of the world, 
and the latter as a human character formed in imita- 
tion of that type as an ideal. 

Goethe believed in typical facts (Urphdnomene) in 
science, as he tells us himself. The Second Part of 
Faust deals in artistical devices equivalent to those 
types in nature. In consequence of this form of rep- 
resentation, the entire work is an enigma to most 
readers. Portions of the Margaret episode are vividly 
clear to all, — as if written with lightning flashes on 
a thunder-cloud. But it is of far more importance to 
the literary student to master Goethe's typical forms. 
They constitute a system of mythology, under which 
the modern world masquerades, just as truly as the 
Greek world did under Homers system of Olympian 
deities. A long life of keenest observation and re- 
flection, reinforced by poetic inspiration, is summed 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



425 



up in these new symbols. It is the highest object of 
intellectual culture to comprehend those vast general 
processes of the social world which generate these 
problems of life, of which all art worthy of the name 
treats. Such phenomena as the French Revolution 
and the Napoleonic wars, the American Republic, 
productive industry, the revival of art, modern liter- 
ature, the scientific spirit, — all these and their like 
are intimately concerned with Mephistopheles and 
the victory over him. 

He who aspires to find in literature something 
higher than mere idle amusement, therefore, will 
study Faust, and especially its Second Part. Ear- 
nest study will discover the significance of the vast 
shadowy forms, and the student will by degrees learn 
to use those mythologic types, and think out by their 
aid solutions to the problems of the world. Classic 
literature has furnished us with mythologic person- 
ages and events as means of expression for life; but 
for life as it was in the classic epoch, and for life in 
all ages only in so far as it is identical with it. The 
poetical insight discovers the essentials of human 
life, and expresses them in any age or in any nation. 
But the temporary environment of those essentials, 
and the consciousness that characterizes the epoch, 
require special treatment. Hence, it is necessary 
for a new world-poet to appear in each epoch, if 
its prosy elements are to be made poetical, and the 
age is to have a spectacle of itself in its recognizable 
features. 



426 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



The Second Part of Faust moves in an atmosphere 
entirely different from that of the First Part. It is 
serene and full of light, — a truly Celestial Paradise 
compared with the Inferno of the First Part. The 
" little world/' where the individual can make or 
mar, is behind us in the journey, and we are arrived 
at the " great world " of institutions which transcend 
the individual might and are the joint product of the 
social whole. 

The first and opening scene portrays for us the in- 
fluences of nature and the lapse of time, which heal 
spiritual as well as physical wounds. In the case of 
spiritual injuries, there must be repentance and re- 
nunciation, a removal of the cause, just as in the case 
of physical wounds there must be a removal of the 
producing causes before the healing process can set 
in. Tepid winds, the fragrance of flowers, shadow 
and twilight, night's repose, — these are the elves 
that draw out the barbs that remorse fixes in the soul. 
These fiery bitter arrows of self-reproach (des Vorwurfs 
gluhend bittre Pfeile) allude to his genuine repentance 
for the evil he has done. Mephistopheles repents of 
nothing, and suffers no grief in his mind. But Faust 
has a human heart besides his evil principles, and 
suffers for his sins. 

A new day awakes after the beautiful Chorus of the 
Elves recording the march of the Hoars. Ariel an- 
nounces the approach of the sun, a symbol of the 
Absolute, and we have an allusion to the baffled pur- 
suit of pure truth. The full light of the sun cannot 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



427 



be borne, but one may gaze refreshed upon its re- 
fracted image in the rainbow. So, instead of pure 
truth, let us look upon its refracted image in the 
institution of the State, which we shall see in its 
visible representative. 

In the second scene we behold this Emperor and 
his court. It is not a State, but the State, — the 
Holy Eoman Empire, which in the time of Charle- 
magne included all Western and Central Europe, and 
under his successors in the Middle Ages included 
Italy and Germany, but finally was confined to the 
latter country. It is the true "Monarchy" of Dante, 
whose universal power shall bring unity of law, and 
consequently peace, to all the world. It is borne in 
mind that the coronation of the Emperor took place 
in Goethe's city, Frankfort, and in his youth he had 
seen the great festival accompanying it. 

In the Emperor, Goethe has given us a Faust of 
the type we have seen in the First Part. He wishes 
to be amused and is not scrupulous as to the means. 
He is a selfish pleasure-seeker, who has virtually 
signed a compact with Mephistopheles. Faust has 
passed beyond this phase of immediate sensuality by 
the purgatorial influences of sin and remorse, and now 
has ambition for power, and will soon develop a pas- 
sion for art. The description of the condition of the 
Empire, on the verge of ruin, is given through the 
mouths of the Chancellor, Commander-in-chief, Treas- 
urer, and Lord High Steward. Unscrupulous devices 
of Mephistopheles at once provide means for cele- 



428 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



brating the Carnival. This is prepared under the 
direction of Faust, who embodies in the masquerade 
a political phantasmagoria showing the genesis and 
destruction of the State. In like manner, the classi- 
cal Walpurgis Night gives the genesis of Greek art 
out of Egyptian and Syrian art, — a sort of symbolic- 
classic phantasmagoria, as the " Helena " is called a 
" Classico-Eomantic Phantasmagoria " by Goethe him- 
self ; the latter shows the genesis of modern or ro- 
mantic art through the study of the classic art. 

Amusement and play have this significance : man 
loves to see himself as a social whole. In play the 
individual enjoys the sense of his potential greatness 
without the real labor and suffering necessary to pro- 
duce it. The species, the race, is a giant ; the indi- 
vidual, by contrast, a puny dwarf. The Carnival as 
an annual festival has this significance : man delights 
to see the image of society, and to feign that he as in- 
dividual is free to assume any station or vocation for 
himself. The beggar may masquerade as king, the 
slave as master, the male as female, the high as low, 
celebrating in this way the fact that each man is in 
substance all men. It was not a wide departure from 
the original and traditional purport of the carnival, 
therefore, for Goethe to employ it, as he does, to 
adumbrate the genesis and destruction of the highest 
political institution, and show us civil society, w 7 ith 
its many vocations, grounded on the power of civil 
government. 

In the Carnival scene we see peace and plenty under 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



429 



the masks of the olive branch and the wheat sheaf, 
beauty and refinement typified by the fancy nosegay 
and the budding roses. Then the gardeners, the 
mother and daughter, and the dumb show following 
it, illustrate the social instinct to veil the natural 
under the form of the ideal. The drunken man is the 
consequence of the gratification of mere natural appe- 
tite : intoxication may realize the carnival at any sea- 
son of the year. But the natural appetites must be 
restrained if society is to be, and for this purpose the 
Graces enter on the scene. These insist on seeing the 
ideal, in place of the real. They restore freedom and 
charm to society. The Fates, who follow next, state 
the limits, laws, and measures that result from the 
application of the ideal to the real, and hence they are 
kindred of the Graces. They set up a standard, or 
norm. But the Graces have counterparts, the Furies. 
Eeject the Graces, w T ho treat each one as if he em- 
bodied all human perfection, — and this is the essence 
of courtesy, — and take note only of human limita- 
tions and imperfections of individuality, and you 
will invoke the Furies. Hatred and jealousy, cal- 
umny and slander, destroy the social bond, and lead 
on to violence : Tisiphone mixes poison, and sharpens 
daggers, and sets in motion the infinite progress of 
the feud and blood revenge. 

Authority is shown to be necessary as the founda- 
tion of society, and to control the Furies. Its mask 
now enters as a Colossus, an elephant guided by 
Prudence sitting on his neck, with two chained fig- 



430 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



ures walking on either side, in whom we are to recog- 
nize Fear and Hope, the former signifying mistrust, 
which suspects evil in one's neighbor, and thus lacks 
confidence sufficient to combine with its fellow men ; 
the latter, Hope, in the sense of green trustfulness, 
which goes to the other extreme, and places all its 
fortune in the hands of other individuals, and thus 
reaches the same result, the destruction of society. 
High aloft rides Yictory, dazzling the sight. Zoilo- 
Thersites, the partisan defamer who works to under- 
mine civil authority, is chastised by the herald. 

Under the sway of civil order, property becomes 
secure, and wealth may be accumulated. The car of 
Plutus (the god of wealth) accordingly enters now, 
guided by a boy charioteer dressed in the robes of 
Apollo as leader of the Muses, who tells us that he is 
Poesy. While Poesy guides the car of Plutus, a taste 
for the beautiful converts wealth into a blessing for 
all people. The poet uses wealth in the service of 
art ; he gilds all prose reality with the gold of his 
own imagination, so that no one looks upon it any 
more as a plain ugly fact, but sees it shining with 
the ideal. Just in this way Walter Scott has gilded 
the lakes and moorlands of Scotland, or Longfellow 
and Whittier and Hawthorne have gilded places and 
scenes in New England. After the boy- Apollo has 
snapped his fingers, gold and pearls and costliest 
jewels abound. He uses wealth for pictures, statues, 
stately temples, scientific museums, parks for health- 
ful amusement. We learn to see the prose fact trans- 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



431 



figured by associations with human interests, and 
crowned with an aureola of historic importance. 

The chariot of wealth is drawn by dragons or watch- 
ful guardians of property, — the police, the civil and 
criminal judiciary, and the men of the law. In con- 
trast to the right user of wealth comes the starveling, 
Mephistopheles masquerading as Avarice, sitting on a 
chest of gold behind Poesy. He uses wealth to cor- 
rupt the morals of the people, and, for effeminate 
luxury or for selfish hoarding purposes, keeps property 
out of channels of greatest usefulness. 

Poesy now takes leave of Plutus, and extravagance 
under the influence of Mephistopheles, dissipates the 
wealth in the form of molten gold, which the crowd 
struggle to obtain. Wild riot ensues. 

The Emperor comes in under the mask of Pan, as a 
selfish tyrant, with rough satyrs, gnomes, fauns, giants, 
and nymphs, typifying selfish courtiers and the hang- 
ers-on at the licentious court circle that surrounded 
the central power in the Holy Eoman Empire, and es- 
pecially the Prench king just previous to the Eevolu- 
tion. Waste of property on the part of men in power 
demoralizes the industries of the people. The destruc- 
tion of the civil authority takes place through the evil 
influence of the parasites that infest the highest politi- 
cal power. The whole fabric of the State flames up in 
one disastrous revolution, in which the Emperor Pan 
(" L'etat c'est moi ") is consumed in flames, — or ap- 
pears to be in the representation. The herald laments, 
and Plutus (the mask of Faust) announces the Carnival 
closed. 



432 



LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



The following scene shows a pleasure garden, in 
which the Emperor thanks Faust for the amusement 
he has received from the masquerade. To his great 
surprise, the ministers enter and report all their for- 
mer difficulties overcome by the new invention, — 
the Mephistophelian principle has invented for the 
use of the State an inconvertible paper money ! 1 

Goethe had studied the phenomenon of the French 
" assignats," and seen their wonderful inflation and 
disastrous collapse. All becomes prosperous at once : 
commerce being stimulated to the highest degree, 
agriculture and manufactures flourish. With plenty 
of money we must have amusement. The beautiful 
must be presented by Faust in its highest form, — 
Greek art. Helen must be brought back and " ma- 
terialized." Mephistopheles cannot create the beauti- 
ful, for he engages only to adapt finite means to finite 
ends ; the beautiful is produced by putting the finite 
under the form of the infinite, i. e. by making it ap- 
pear as expressing personal freedom. But Mephis- 
topheles, as principle of negation, can show how to 
think abstractly, so he gives a " little key " (Nein, — 
not, i. e. the negative typifies all abstraction), to Faust, 

1 " Paper money is the money of the understanding ; gold, the 
money of the reason." Brockmeyer's Lectures on Faust (unpub- 
lished). 

This wonderful commentator has not carried out his interpreta- 
tion beyond the First Part of Faust, except so far as to lay the basis 
for, and show the necessity of, the two parts, and indicate the 
two styles of treatment and the two different spheres of life to be 
treated. 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



433 



and advises him to seek the " Mothers." He cautions 
him to hold the key off from his body ; and with good 
reason, for if one is to understand the mode of think- 
ing of another people far separated by time, he must 
free himself from his subjective personal likes and 
dislikes, and get an objective criterion. The operation 
of the key he describes : " Sink, then ! I might say 
also, rise ! it is the same thing : fly that which has 
come into being, in the unbound spaces of forms." 
This seems a poetic way of describing philosophic 
reflection, which abstracts from the conditions of ex- 
istence in order to reach pure ideas. The " Mothers " 
are enthroned goddesses, spaceless and timeless like 
Plato's archetypal ideas. Mephistopheles describes 
these with much particularity. They are seen by the 
light of a glowing tripod engaged in creating and 
transforming finite things, — " the eternal amusement 
of the eternal intelligence." The patterns of all crea- 
tures hover round them. Plutarch describes the 
Platonic ideas as "the causes, forms, and original 
images of all things which have been and which 
shall be." Commentators find passages in Plutarch's 
Morals which may have furnished Goethe the poetic 
images here used, but it is clear enough that the idea 
is Platonic, and traces to Plato's Pythagoreanism. 
"While it is interesting to examine minutely the de- 
tails of this remarkable device by which Faust brings 
up Helen from the underworld, it is not necessary 
for the general purposes of comprehending Faust. 
Goethe wishes to embody in a type the method of the 

28 



434 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

a priori road to the principles of the Beautiful. No 
modern can understand the spirit of Greek art with- 
out such a journey to the " Mothers." The Mephis- 
tophelian " spirit that denies " cannot accompany 
Faust on his journey thither, although it has to fur- 
nish a necessary key, abstraction from one's own en- 
vironment. Greek art has an environment peculiar 
to it, and it is necessary to comprehend that in order 
to see its genesis. 

Faust brings up Paris and Helen to the stage, and 
exhibits them to the mighty Emperor, — much as 
Eacine and Corneille produced for the court of Louis 
XIV. their French-Greek plays. But here we are 
to learn that the a priori method, although sufficient 
to accomplish such wonders as these, does not suf- 
fice for the soul that falls in love with art. Faust 
touches Paris with his key, and an explosion follows. 
The "materialized" spirits vanish, and Faust lies 
senseless on the ground. The danger of this method 
of producing art is, that, when the artist comes to the 
concrete, he supplies modern details and environment, 
and not the antique. He falls out of his part. The 
Greek art exists for the Greek type of culture, Helen 
for Paris, and Paris for Helen. If Faust wishes 
Helen for himself, he must create in himself the 
Greek type of culture by the slow process of studying 
its genesis step by step. His a priori method may 
bring him to the spectacle of the beautiful, but it does 
not give him creative possession of it. French-Greek 
art is after all not Greek in spirit, although it has 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



435 



some external resemblance to it. Eacine and Cor- 
neille both touched the resuscitated Greek with their 
magic key. Like Faust, they insisted in putting 
themselves into the play, or, what is the same thing, 
making the Greek form of the drama hold modern 
personages and ways of life. 

Faust became unconscious of the modern environ- 
ment in his absorption with the classic, and took no 
more interest in the affairs of the Emperor's court. 
Mephistopheles must seek out a means for the near- 
est approach to the antique beautiful, and accordingly 
returns to Wagner, the spirit of analytical investiga- 
tion and prose erudition. For the substantial resto- 
ration of the Greek spirit, and the contemplation of 
Greek art in that spirit, in our age, we must have 
something besides the a priori production of it. 
There must be excavations, and the collection of 
fragments, whiah are to be studied piece by piece, 
in the manner that erudition and archaeology have 
undertaken. 

The Homunculus represents this spirit of speciali- 
zation : it is confined in a bottle, and typifies the 
German archaeologist realized in Winckelmann and 
his followers, and, less directly, the entire modern 
spirit of inductive science. 

If sufficiently limited, a field of investigation 
mapped out may be exhausted by the individual spe- 
cialist : when he knows it exhaustively, he learns to 
see the relativity of all its details. Each detail is de- 
pendent upon and suggests all the others. It thus 



436 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE, 



becomes alive, for the definition of a living organism 
is this : each part is both means and end to all the 
other parts. Sufficiently specialized and narrowed 
down, the province may be so exhaustively inves- 
tigated that the living bond of connection may be 
found, and a living being is produced, — an Homun- 
culus in a bottle. Wagner is the sort of scholar who 
learns to " confine his attention to the dative case," in 
order that he may not simply rehash erudition already 
existent, but himself make new contributions to it. 
We think of Winckelmann patiently measuring the 
contour of the several features of the face, as he found 
them in antique statues, and recording the angle which 
the open eyelids made as a canon by which to iden- 
tify Venus, Juno, and Diana by this feature alone. 
The history of modern science abounds in Homun- 
culi. Cuvier specializes comparative anatomy, and 
can see the whole animal in a newly discovered fossil 
bone from the Eocene strata ; Lyell can read its his- 
tory in a pebble ; Mebuhr can see the actual history 
adumbrated in a Eoman myth, and, like Lyell, inter- 
pret it as a sort of drift boulder of humanity, broken 
off from its connecting strata, and ground into its 
shape under the glaciers of revolution ; Agassiz could 
reconstruct the whole fish from one of its scales. 

With Homunculus to light the w r ay, Faust may 
find Helen, of a surety. The classical Walpurgis 
Night shows the process by which Greek art itself 
was found. It began with traditions from Egypt and 
Syria, and developed out of their art-forms, half ani- 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



437 



mal, half human, such as the sphinxes, griffins, sirens, 
centaurs, pygmies, and dactyls. Progressive meta- 
morphoses separated the human from the animal, and 
finally reached the sea-nymph, Galatea, as the perfect 
human form. The artists of Ehodes claim to be the 
first to represent the high gods in human forms. The 
Cabiri (or " mighty ones ") of the Phoenicians and 
Egyptians, sons of Phtha (the Egyptian Vulcan), the 
divine metal-worker, indicate the bronze statues of 
the gods produced by Phtha (hence called his sons), 
and mark an important transition towards Greek art. 
The studies into the origin of the earth, rather poetic 
conjectures than scientific conclusions, divide between 
a water principle and a fire principle. Thales and 
Anaxagoras represent these tendencies, and find place 
in Goethe's poem because they mark the undercurrent 
of reflection that guides unseen the development of 
Greek art in its selection of a worthy representation 
of the divine form. The fire, symbol of spirit, with 
water, symbol of organic matter, are united in Greek 
art so that neither preponderates. Homunculus as- 
pires to free himself from the confinement of his bot- 
tle, — empiricism strives to return to a vision of the 
totality. On the appearance of Galatea, shining 
with the radiance of perfect beauty, he breaks his 
glass against her chariot, and becomes Eros, or poetic 
inspiration, which sees the whole in each part. 

In the study of art Faust arrives at the insight 
into the formative principle in the divine. Instead 
of being negative to form, as Pantheism supposes, it is 



438 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



rather the formative energy that Polytheism presup- 
poses. Proteus, who is indifferent to all forms and 
yet ceaselessly incarnating himself, teaches Homun- 
culus how to escape from his bottle, proving himself 
to be the principle that initiates forms, and breaks 
forms only to grow by transformation into higher 
ones. The poet learns to recognize in all things the 
one spiritual principle; and this is the reason that 
he speaks in the language of metaphor and personi- 
fication, having learned that all things are means of 
spiritual expression. 

The a priori mode of reaching Greek art gave place 
to the other method of specialization, which sufficed to 
bring Greece before us in its actual genesis. But the 
result of the specialized inquiry conducts us back to 
the standpoint of immediate insight, typified by Eros, 
i. e. poetic or artistic insight, which sees all nature a 
revelation of the spiritual totality, just as a single bone 
revealed the living animal to Cuvier. 

The " Helena" has the advantage of the wonderful 
commentary of Thomas Carlyle. Faust finds Helen ; 
Euphorion is born, adumbrating modern art and lit- 
erature arising from the union of the Greek and Teu- 
tonic principles. The Greek sought the representation 
of free individuality ; the Teutonic seeks the realiza- 
tion of freedom in actual life : the union of the two is 
Eomantic art, — the art whose principle is infinite as- 
piration. But Faust does not find his problem solved 
by art, — Classic or Eomantic. One great thing he 
has learned from it, as we have seen, — the Divine 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



439 



reveals itself in forms, and above all in the human 
form. This points towards a divine-human nature. 
The Absolute is at least a form-giving principle, and 
loves to initiate forms and to perfect them. The real 
essence of the human form, it is true, is not the body, 
but the soul, — an energy whose characteristic is to be 
subject and its own object. This principle of form as 
the essential form therefore transcends physical form, 
although it finds expression in the latter. Faust leaves 
art?, and struggles up to a more adequate communion 
with the essential truth, that he has now seen a 
glimpse of. There is a more intimate acquaintance 
possible than through art. He can recognize the 
Divine in his fellow man, and feels the Absolute to 
be the Spirit of the invisible Church of humanity. 

In the fourth act we see Faust aspiring to become 
a useful citizen in the secular world. He desires to 
see the people multiply and be well fed, and, what is 
more important, " taught and well bred," and above 
all active in helping each other. 

The Mephistophelian Emperor has lived for a while 
in luxury by means of his paper money, but the deluge 
came at last in the shape of revolution. Faust is, 
however, no longer in the negative mood, but wishes 
to build up rather than tear down. He assists the 
Emperor to quell the insurrection. He does not ask 
in return the gift of a principality, but only the shore 
of the sea, with the privilege of reclaiming the land 
covered by the ocean wastes. It is a place for labor 
rather than a finished product that he wants. He does 



440 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE, 



not conceive the Absolute to be a fixed result, like a 
work of art, nor a mere negative process, like the 
formless Absolute of Pantheism. He is an Energy 
that delights to make that which is bad good, and 
that which is good better, in the interest of human 
beings. 

The fifth act shows us Faust engaged in this labor 
of building dikes and canals, and a busy people set- 
tling on the newly recovered land, and an ocean com- 
merce thriving. 

Here at last Faust has found the moment which 
seems "fair," and he could live in the thought of it 
forever without tedium. This, then, is the goal and 
object of human nature, that condition for which it 
was intended. To be the builder of a great public 
benefit gives him a consciousness that is ever gratify- 
ing. In the service of his fellow men he sees that he 
can always be happy. He overcomes finally his worst 
enemy, impatience (he had cursed patience deeper 
than all on occasion of his compact with Mephistoph- 
eles) and now renounces magic. He sees in magic 
the unscrupulous might that looks only to the end 
desired, and is not duly considerate of the welfare of 
the human interests which furnish the means. The 
burning of the cottage of Baucis and Philemon by 
his agents, under the guidance of Mephistopheles, is 
represented as teaching him this last lesson. He re- 
fuses now to recognize his nearly helpless condition, 
worn out and blind with age and life's cares. He 
finds refuge from all grief in absorption in his great 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



441 



work. He will set at once about draining a pestilen- 
tial marsh that still remains by the neighboring hill. 
Space will be furnished for many millions of human 
beings, — not to dwell in repose, but daily earning 
their freedom, and in the constant feeling of their 
mutual dependence. With this thought, which can 
bring happiness to him even in the physical pain of 
death, he dies. Mephistopheles has brought him to 
say to the passing moment, " Stay, for thou art fair," 
and technically in one sense won his wager ; but in 
reality he has lost his wager, for he has not found 
any sensual delights nor selfish delights of any kind 
that could satisfy Faust. He has found that, not 
selfishness, but altruism alone, can satisfy human na- 
ture. The angels, therefore, win Faust's soul. They 
appear in the clouds and drive away the demons 
with a shower of roses (symbols of love). The good 
does not fight with weapons of hate ; but to the de- 
monic nothing is so repulsive as love and self-sacri- 
fice for others. 

The closing scene is the noblest culmination of this 
wonderful drama. It shows us the four great leading 
ideas of Christianity which have characterized the 
four epochs of its history. 

Pater Ecstaticus is the type that prevailed in the 
first epoch. Then the individual had to renounce 
not only his animal nature, but also the heathen civ- 
ilization, and flee to the desert, seeking as a hermit 
to purify himself within. He sought later, under the 
lead of St. Benedict, to create artificial desert caves 



442 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 

by building monasteries with high walls, which shut 
out civilization, although in the midst of it. The 
monastery improved on the solitary hermit life by 
forming a Christian community, a Church. Pater 
Ecstaticus is eager for martyrdom, to purge away 
the earthly dross that dims his purity. 

Next came, in the thirteenth century, two wonder- 
ful men, St. Dominic and St. Francis. Both issued 
forth from the monastery to conquer the world out- 
side of its walls. It was not sufficient to shut out 
the world ; sin must be shut out from the world. 
St. Dominic's movement is typified by Pater Pro- 
fundus. The Dominicans revived learning, and mas- 
tered the literatures and philosophies of ancient 
times, and built up the vast structure of Christian 
theology. They recognized God, not as hostile to 
nature and science and literature, but as the Creator 
of them. Hence, Pater Profundus recognizes " mes- 
sengers of God's love " in the lightnings and torrents 
that had been thought the work of the Devil. 

Pater Seraphicus, typifying the movement of St. 
Francis, who went out to the lowliest people, and 
repeated Christ's mission to the beggars and outcasts, 
expresses his tender love for that which is most in 
need. " Boys with a soul and sense half shut," hav- 
ing died before they saw the light of this life, are for 
the angel souls the sweetest gain. They have been 
deprived of the experience of the earth-life, but the 
angels will see to it that it is all made up to them 
by imparting to them their experience. " Use my 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



443 



eyes," says the holy father, and " gaze upon the world 
of human experience/' This is the finest touch in 
Faust. Instead of the cold haughtiness of the Earth- 
Spirit, who repels human finitude, Goethe has found 
that God's love is so tender toward individuality 
that it nurses into being and fulness even the em- 
bryonic forms that fail to mature in the earth-life. 
The spirit of Faust is placed in charge of these 
embryonic souls, who receive him in his "chrysalis 
state," and proceed to loosen the flakes of earthly 
nature that encompass him. 

Doctor Marianus (named from Maria, because he 
proclaims the Virgin) is the complement of Pater 
Seraphicus in that he utters the doctrine that the 
highest principle in the universe is God''s grace, 
symbolized under the form of the Holy Virgin, who 
appears as Mater Gloriosa, surrounded by penitent 
women, among whom we recognize Margaret. 

It has been suggested, however, by Eosenkranz and 
others, that Doctor Marianus represents the soul ot 
Faust after it has grown "fair and great by holy living," 
as the chorus of blessed boys pronounces him after the 
earthly flakes are removed. Pater Ecstaticus is repre- 
sented as "hovering up and down"; Pater Profundus 
as in the " lower region " ; Pater Seraphicus as in the 
"middle region"; Doctor Marianus as "in the highest, 
purest cell." It would seem from this that Doctor 
Marianus is intended as a fourth in the list of his- 
torical types. Diintzer informs us that "Doctor" was 
substituted for " Pater," as first written. The "blessed 



444 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. 



boys " who welcomed Faust hover about him, and 
announce that Faust is outgrowing them with mighty 
limbs, and that he will return them a rich reward for 
their assistance ; he will share with them his rich 
earthly experience. Doctor Marianus exhorts the peni- 
tents to look up to the tender glance of the Madonna, 
who has been drawn near to the earth to assist them. 
This, coming directly after the Mater Gloriosa has 
assigned Faust for instruction as an immature spirit 
(" Still blindeth him the new glare of day ") to Mar- 
garet, in reply to her petition, proves that Goethe 
could not have intended to represent him under the 
title Doctor Marianus. 

Margaret's prayer to the Mater Gloriosa intention- 
ally recalls her prayer to the Mater Dolorosa in the 
First Part. 

A Chorus Mysticus closes the drama, uniting in one 
statement the doctrines of the Holy Fathers and of 
the Doctor, and announces the doctrine of divine 
grace as the supreme principle : " All that is perish- 
able is but a symbol; the inadequate grows here to 
complete reality; the indescribable here is accom- 
plished; the Eternal- Womanly draweth us on." 

The womanly element in the Divine Being de- 
scribes especially the tenderness and graciousness that 
nurture what is feeble and impotent, and lacking char- 
acter, into strength and maturity. The infant lacks 
responsibility, and cannot be treated from the stand- 
point of justice without destroying him. His deed 
of caprice must not be returned upon him as on a 



GOETHE'S FAUST. 



445 



mature person. His freaks and irrationality are borne 
patiently by the mother, and his individuality gradu- 
ally drawn out and developed. Hence, the feminine 
element in the Divine Nature has especial reference to 
God's grace, which, according to Goethe, deals with a 
world of imperfect creatures, and leads them towards 
their own good through their freedom. 

In the eighth book of the Autobiography, already 
referred to, Goethe indicates such a view of theology 
at the age of twenty years as corresponds with the 
conclusion of this Second Part of Faust. When man 
had fallen, instead of permitting him to lapse into 
annihilation, the Elohim chose to initiate a movement 
of restoration, and to save by an act of divine con- 
descension what was otherwise lost through perversion 
of its own freedom. 

It is, if I am not mistaken, the most interesting 
event in literary history, that Goethe should conduct 
his hero from pantheistic agnosticism to Christian 
theism. 



INDEX. 




BSOLUTE, the search after, 388; 
a formless principle, 389. 



Achilles, as drawn by Homer, 374, 377. 
Adams, Sarah Holland, translation of 

Grimm, 384. 
^schylus cited, 82, 92. 
Agamemnon, 365, 374. 
Agnosticism of Faust, 393 ; of Herbert 

Spencer, 394. 
Albee, John, his essay on Goethe, xxiii, 

39-67. 

Alchemy, of the Arabians, 385, 387; 
studied by Goethe, 385 ; by Faust, 
388 ; by Wagner, 395. 

Alcott, A. Bronson, v; his criticism of 
Goethe, 172-176; reads Faust, 172- 
175 ; suggests Webster as an American 
Mephistopheles, 174 ; describes the 
mission of the Devil, 176. 

Alexander the Great, 170. 

Amalia, Duchess of Weimar, vi. 

American barbarians, 158. 

American literature, 162, 180. 

American Revolution, 381. 

American translations of Goethe men- 
tioned, 181, 218. 

Annals, of Goethe, 54. 

Anster's version of Faust, 173. 

Apothegms of Goethe, 120. 

Arabian chemistry, 387. 

Architect, the Young, in Elective Affini- 
ties, 264, 267-269, 270, 276. 

Ariosto, mentioned by Frederick the 
Great, 159. 

Aristotle, quoted or mentioned, 70, 77, 
197. 

Arnold's History of Heretics, 386. 
Arnold, Matthew, 14, 168. 



Art in Goethe, 59, 378, 391. 
Aryans, theology of, 73-74. 
Assistant, the, in Elective Affinities, 

263, 264, 267. 
Athena, in Prometheus, 78-81, 92. 
Athens, Bishop of, 84. 
August, Karl, Grand Duke, xii. 
Augustine, St., 117. 
Austin, Mrs. Sarah, 35. 
Autobiography of Goethe, 3, 54, 291, 

385. 

BACON, FRANCIS, and Goethe, 102, 
161. 

Bailey, Philip James, his Festus, 184. 

Bajadere, the, Goethe's poem of, 360. 

Baron de Jupiter, 349. 

Bartol, Dr., his essay on Goethe and 
Schiller, xxiii, 107-140; quoted, 27, 
166 ; his criticism discussed, 180. 

Basil, the alchemist, 385. 

Basse, William, (English poet,) quoted, 
179. 

Baumgart, Dr. Hermann, the best ex- 
positor of Das Marchen, 136, 139, 144. 
Beatrice of Dante, 110. 
Benedict, St., 70. 

Bernays, Professor, his Junge Goethe, 2. 

Bettine, letter to, from Goethe, 283; 
mentioned, 351. 

Bibliography of Goethe in general, xiv; 
of his works, xiv-xvii ; of works on, 
xviii-xxi; papers on, xxi, xxii; con- 
cerning Goethe's youth, 33-36 ; mis- 
cellaneous, 33, 34 ; Herder, 34, 35 ; 
Friederike Brion, 35 ; religious views, 
35, 36 ; Spinoza and Pantheism, 36. 

Bismarck, Prince, 108, 346. 



448 



INDEX. 



Bonaparte, Napoleon, remark to Goethe, 
108. 

Botany, Goethe in, 46, 320. 
Brion, Friederike, 11, 12, 35, 51, 167, 
318, 350. 

Brockmeyer, Henry C, quoted, 375 ; 

his Letters on Faust, quoted, 388-390, 

394-396, 399-402, 405, 407, 408, 410, 

414, 416, 420, 422, 432. 
Buff, Charlotte, 51. 
Biirgerlich, 347, 356. 
Burns, Robert, quoted, 86. 
Byron, Lord, read and discussed by 

Goethe, 186, 187. 



CAESAR, JULIUS, of Shakespeare, 
quoted, 376. 
Captain, The, in Elective Affinities, 261, 

262,272,273, 277, 278,286. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 116, 168, 373; his 
opinion of Goethe, 119, 170; com- 
pares Goethe and Schiller, 124, 125; 
translates Das Marchen, 135, 136 ; 
quoted, 373; his critique on the 
Helena, 438. 
Charlotte, in Elective Affinities, 257- 

260, 269-279, 282, 286, 312. 
Charlotte, in Werther, 348, 356. 
Chaucer, mentioned by Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, 178 ; by Basse, 179 ; quoted, 311. 
Cheney, Mrs. Ednah D., essay on Das 

Ewig-Weibliche, xxiii, 189-250. 
Child Life in Goethe, 290-312 ; in Meis- 
ter, 295-307; in Gotz, 307-310; in 
Faust, 310 ; as portrayed by Goethe, 
311, 312. 
Chorus in Heaven, 444. 
Church, the Christian, 375, 386. 
Clavigo, Goethe's, 12, 240. 
Coleridge, quoted, 231 ; mentioned, 368. 
Colors, Goethe's Theory of, 61, 229. 
Concord School, Lectures on Goethe at, 
xxiii ; on Pantheism, xxiv j on Dante 
and Plato, xxv. 
Corinth, Die Braut von, 360, 361. 
Counterparts (novel), cited, 120. 
Critique of Pure Reason, 382, 383. 
Cromwell, quoted, 163. 
Culture, as understood by Goethe, 40. 
Cushman, Charlotte, 131. 



D'ALEMBERT and Frederic the 
Great, 158, 160. 
Dante, 44, 85, 99, 374 ; and Goethe, 110, 

231, 378 ; his Monarchy, 427. 
Darwin, Charles, 114, 115. 
Davidson, Thomas, 184; essay on 

Goethe's Titanism, xxiii, 68-106. 
Descartes, 100. 

Devil, the, 174, 176, 342, 343. 

Dichtung und Wahrheit, 35, 226, 385. 

Dickens, Charles, mentioned, 233; his 
women, 352. 

Dilettanti, defined, 53. 

Divina Commedia, 105, 374, 377. 

Donne, John, quoted, 167. 

Drama, artistic success of a, 190, 191 ; 
technical success, 194-196 ; the com- 
plete, 196, 197-200. 

Dwight, J. S., translation of Faust 
quoted, 218. 

Dyans, 73, 74. 



EARTH-SPIRIT, 388, 389, 394. 
Easter Morning, in Faust, 396, 407. 
Eckermann, conversations with Goethe, 
3, 24; letter from Goethe, 222; 
quoted, 247, 251, 314, 349. 
Education of children, 299. 
Edward in Elective Affinities, 234-236, 

257, 258-279, 282, 286. 
Egmont of Goethe, 183, 191, 200, 364 ; 
analysis of, by Mr. Partridge, 207- 
209 ; quoted, 364. 
Elective Affinities, of Goethe, 112, 123, 
234-236; essay on, 251-289; title of, 
251 ; the only true novel of Goethe, 
254; title justified, 256, 257 ; charac- 
ters of, 257-271 ; plot of, 271-279 ; as 
a work of art, 283; is not immoral, 
284 ; fate in, 287, 288 ; lessons of life 
in, 289. 

Emerson, R. W., 34, 168, 169, 172, 305, 
307; contrasted with Goethe, 114, 
115 ; his criticism of Goethe, 115, 116, 
170, 171, 172. 

Emery, S. H., Jr., essay on Elective 
Affinities, xxiii, 251-289. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, quoted, 284; 
the French, 382. 

Erd-Geist, the, 389, 394. 



INDEX. 



449 



Erl King, The, 361. 
Erwin of Steinbach, 8. 
Ethics of Spinoza, 24, 36. 
Euphorion, birth of, 242, 310 ; 438. 
Euripides, 197, 199. 

Evil, treatment of, by Goethe, 175, 385. 
Ewig-Weibliche, Mrs. E. D. Cheney on, 

218-249 ; synopsis of this lecture, 249, 

250 ; 361,362,367, 444. 



FAIR SAINT, the, 358, 359, 385. 
Family, the institution, 242, 282, 

374. 

Faust, (the poem,) viii, 2, 26, 111, 115, 
164, 200, 205, 345, 353, 357 ; quoted, 
93, 94, 125-127, 210-220, 294, 295, 
355 ; MSS. of, x, xi ; and Marlowe's 
Dr. Faustus, 160, 184, 315, 316; 
analysis of, by Mr. Partridge, 205- 
207 ; by Mrs. Cheney, 243-246 ; sex 
in, 247, .248 ; Das Ewig- Weibliche 
in, 248 ; child life in, 310 ; essay on 
the form, 313-344; conception of, 
313-320; the poem a biography, 319 ; 
composition of, 320, 321, 328, 329; gaps 
in, 321, 332 ; publication (1790) of the 
Fragment, 321-323 ; small apprecia- 
tion of this, 324 ; criticism on this, 
324-329 ; publication (1808) of the 
completion, 326, 328, 329 ; favorable 
reception of this, 329 ; commentary 
and criticism on, 329-336 ; parallel 
criticism on the Iliad, 334 ; evolution 
and final completion of, 342-344 ; 
characters in, 353 ; design of, 392. 

Faust, (the character,) 66, 93, 94, 126, 
160, 161, 243-246, 378, 400-410 , his 
talk with Margaret on religion, 412 ; 
his pantheism, 413, 414, note; his 
journey with Mephistopheles, 417- 

. 422 ; interpreted by Brockmeyer, 390- 
432 ; his later life, 439-441 ; his death 
and salvation, 441-444. 

Felix, (the boy,) 295-298, 303-305. 

Female and male in nature, 230 ; in 
man, 231 ; in spirit, 232. 

Festus, (English poem,) 184. 

Fichte, 60. 

Fischer, Kuno, critic of Faust, yii, 330- 
332. 

29 



France, 139 ; "where poet never grew,'* 

174 ; in Rousseau's time, 381. 
Frankfort, birthplace of Goethe, 4, 167 ; 
home of Goethe, 15, 16 ; Gelehrte 
Anzeigen of, 17 ; reviews in, quoted, 
18-23 ; coronation at, 427. 
Frederic the Great, sneers at Goethe 
and German literature, 158 ; predicts 
the future, 160 ; ignorant of Schiller, 
160; writes to D'Alembert, 158, 160 ; 
to Voltaine, 159 ; to Jordan, 166. 
Freitag, G., quoted, 189. 
French, the, in Frankfort, 4. 
French literature, 139 ; its influence on 

Goethe, 165, 381. 
French Revolution, 139, 317, 380-383, 
425. 

Frothingham, Dr. N. L., translation of 
Iphigenie, 181. 



GELLERT, (German poet,) 160. 
Genius, the old Eternal, 171. 
George IV., Byron's verses on, 184. 
Germany, Das Marchen a prophecy of, 
136 ; narrative of, from the 16th cen- 
tury to 1795, 136, 137, 138 ; Church 
of, the Old Woman in Das Marchen, 
138, 144-147, 151, 152^155 ; genius of, 
the Youth in Das Marchen, 138, 149- 
156 ; ideal of, the Fair Lily in Das 
Marchen, 138, 142, 147-156 ; language 
of, 158-160; literature of, the Ser- 
pent in Das Marchen, 138, 141, 142, 
145, 151, 152 ; before Goethe, 158, 
178 ; after Goethe, 164 ; predicted by 
Frederick the Great, 160 ; philosophy 
of, 164. 
Gesner, (German poet,) 160. 
God, defined by Dr. Hedge, 25; early 
conceptions of, 72-79 ; these affected 
by Christianity, 82, 83; Goethe's 
ideas of, 97-100, 355. 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, (born 
at Frankfort, 1749,), his youth, 1-36 ; 
Autobiography, 3 , other accounts of 
his youth, 4 ; early circumstances, 4 ; 
early letters quoted, 5; at Leipzig, 
6-8 ; and Herder, 8-10 ; early love 
affairs, 13-15 ; early studies, 16 ; lit- 
erary attempts, 18-21 ; connected with 



450 



INDEX. 



the Gelehrte Anzeigen, 17 ; reviews 
quoted, 19-21, 225 ; standpoint of his 
criticism, 23 ; and Spinoza, 24 ; his 
philosophy, 25-28 ; summary of his 
first twenty -five years, 29 ; letters 
quoted, 30-33, 314 ; bibliography of 
his youth, 33-36; his Self-Culture, 
37-67 ; an eminent example of self- 
culture, 40 ; characteristics of his 
style, 41 ; his creative power, 43 ; 
as a realist, 44; and woman, 50- 
52 ; objective spirit of, 55, 56 ; op- 
posed to technicality, 59, 60 ; and 
Keats, 61 ; opposed to specialism, 
62 ; given to symbolizing, 63 ; his 
Faust and Meister, 66 ; his Titan- 
ism, 68-106, 77, 78, 338, 339; his 
Prometheus, 78-81, 86, 87 ; as com- 
pared to Gotz, etc., 86, 87, 88-91 ; in 
Faust, 93, 94 ; in Gott und Welt, 95 ; 
in Meister, 95, 96 ; his conceptions 
of God, 96, 97; stages of Titanism, 
102,103; complete Titanism impossi- 
ble to, 104, 105, 106; and Schiller, 
107-134; and Napoleon, 108; one of 
the transcendent bards, 110 ; and 
Dante, 110; and Milton, 111; and 
Emerson, 114, 115; and Carlyle, 116, 
119, 120 ; his faults, 116, 119 ; not a 
Cato, 120; compared with Schiller, 
121-123, 124, 128, 131-134 ; estimated 
by Carlyle, 124, 125, 170 ; and Shake- 
speare, 128, 129, 161; one of the Magi, 
131; his Marchen (1795), 135-156; 
patriotism of, 137, 138 ; and English 
Literature, 157-188 ; and Frederic the 
Great, 158-160 ; and Milton, 160 , and 
Bacon, 162 ; egoism of, 162 ; and Ger- 
man literature, 163 ; models of, 165 ; 
affected by Oriental literature, 165 ; in 
love, 166 ; his influence on English lit- 
erature, 168 ; his real work in litera- 
ture, 169 ; eulogized by Emerson, 170- 
172 ; by Alcott, 172-176 ; his knowl- 
edge of English literature, 178 , the 
Shakespeare of Germany, 180 ; Iphi- 
genia his most perfect drama, 181 ; 
this quoted, 181-183 ; discussed, 183 , 
his Faust legend, 184, 185 ; and 
Crabbe Robinson, 185-187 ; discusses 
Byron, 186, 18Y , Milton, 185-187 ; 



and Landor, 187, 188 ; as a Play- 
wright, 189-217 : his Gotz, 200-205 ; 
his Faust, 206, 207; his Egmont, 
207-209; his Iphigenia, 209-211; 
his Tasso, 211-213, 236; his short- 
comings as a playwright, 213, 214; 
reasons for these, 215, 216 ; his 
Eivig-Weibliche, 218-250 ; the climax 
of his thought, 219; letters quoted, 
222 ; his thought of woman, 223 ; his 
different types of woman, 224; his 
Wahrheit und Dichtung, 226 ; a mas- 
culine man, 227 ; Elective Affinities, 
234-236 ; Wilhelm Meister, 237, 238 ; 
Naturliche Tochter, 238, 239 ; Cla- 
vigo, 240 ; his love and marriage, 
241; and domestic love, 242; his 
Elective Affinities, 251-289 ; a poetic 
production, 252; on the Novel, 253; 
the only true novel of, 254 : novels 
of, criticised, 255 ; letter quoted 283 ; 
criticism of the Elective Affinities, 284, 
285 ; his Child Life, 290-312 , child- 
hood of, 291 ; early religion of, 292, 
293 ; his parents, 294 ; and mothers, 
310, 311 ; and woman, 311 ; and chil- 
dren, 310-312 ; the Faust form of, 313- 
344 ; his conception of Faust, 313, 314; 
and Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, 316, 317 ; 
and the Faust legend, 319 ; in botany, 
320; his composition of Faust, 320, 
321, 328, 329 ; and the genetic method, 
339 ; his physiology, 339 ; and bot- 
any, 340; literary metamorphosis of, 
340, 341 ; his completion of Meister, 
341 ; evolution of Faust, 342-344 ; 
his women , 345-367 ; his mother, 347; 
his sister, 348 ; his love affairs, 346- 
352 ; his female characters, 353, 354- 
365 ; his imagination, 363 ; his mar- 
riage, 363, 364 ; his sense of beauty, 
365 ; of the pleasurable, 366 ; light- 
diffusing, 366 ; last scene of his life, 
367; his study of Gnosticism, 386, 
and the alchemists, 385 , unpublished 
letters of, vii, xi-xiii ; MSS. of, in the 
Goethe Archives, vii-xi , Diaries of, 
in the Goethe Archives, viii, xiii, 
xiv ; Portraits of, xiv ; Ranch's 
bust of, xiv ; bibliography of, xiv- 
xxii. 



INDEX. 



451 



Goethe, Walther von, last descendant 
of the poet, vi ; his will, vi. 

Goethe Jahrbuch, vii. 

Goethe Society and the Goethe Archives, 
vi-xiv ; officers of, vii ; objects of, vii.. 

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, read by 
Goethe, 168. 

Gospel of John, 400. 

Gott und die Bajadere, Der, 360. 

Gott und Welt, 29, 95. 

Gottsched, mentioned by Goethe, 6. 

Gotz von Berlichingen, (1771,) viii, 88, 
89, 121, 158, 168, 191, 200, 307-310, 
318, 345, 356 ; despised by Frederic 
the Great, 159 ; translated by Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, 168, 204 ; quoted, 309, 310 ; 
criticised by Mr. Partridge, 200-205 ; 
child life in, 307-310. 

Greek literature, 160, 165. 

Greeks, their conception of God, 69-72 ; 
of tragedy, 183. 

Grimm, Dr. Herman, 24, 226, 228, 233, 
285, 384. 



HAMLET, 112, 316, 378. 
Handel, 157, 158. 
Harrington, John, quoted, 76. 
Harris, Prof. W. T., essay on Faust, 
xxii, 368 ; on Wilhelm Meister, xxiii. 
Hayward's Faust, 173. 
Hebrews, their conception of God, 68- 
72. 

Hedge, Dr. F. H. , 251 ; essay on Das 
M'archen, xxii, 135-156. 

Hegel, 252, 281, 325, 327. 

Heine, (the poet,) 22. 

Helena, 112, 126 ; quoted, 115. 

Herder, 8-10 ; at Strassburg, 9, 180 ; mo- 
rose, 121 ; criticises Goethe, 180. 

Hermann und Dorothea, 112, 242. 

Hewett, Prof. , v ; his account of the 
new-found Goethe MSS., vi-xiv. 

Holy Roman Empire, 136, 137, 138, 144, 
427. 

Homer, Goethe's enthusiasm for, ix ; 
Odyssey cited, 82 ; mentioned by 
Frederick, 157 ; Iliad picked to pieces 
by German critics, 334; compared 
with Dante and Shakespeare, 369, 
373-375. 



Homunculus, in Faust, 423, 425. 
Horen, Die, 135. 

Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, essay on 

Goethe's women, xxiii, 345-367. 
Howells, W. D., his women, 352. 
Humboldt, W. von, Goethe to, 314, 384. 
Hume, David, 382. 



ICELAND, serpents in, 157. 
Ignorance, Popular, the Giant in 
Das M'archen, 143-148. 
Indenture, Meister' s, quoted, 107. 
Inferno of Dante, 110, 377. 
Iphigenia in Tauris, ix, 181, 191, 200, 
207; quoted, 181-183; discussed, by 
Mr. Sanborn, 183; analyzed by Mr. 
> Partridge, 209, 210, 211; Goethe's 
most finished drama, 211. 



JACOBI, 26 ; letter to, from Goethe, 
96. 

James, Henry, his women, 352. 
Job, the Uzzian, 173. 
Johnson, Samuel, quoted, 187. 
Jonson, Ben, describes Shakespeare, 177. 
Jordan, letter to, from Frederick the 

Great, 166. 
Julius Caesar, quoted, 129, 376. 
Jung Stilling, quoted, 120. 



KANT, EMMANUEL, 123, 166, 380- 
383. 

Kant, (unknown preacher,) 166. 
Karl, in Gotz, 308-310. 
Keats and Goethe, anecdote of, 61. 
Kings, the Four, in Das M'archen, 138, 

143-145, 153-156. 
Klettenberg, Fraulein von, 5, 123, 358. 
Klopstock, 22. 

Konigsberg, Frederic the Great at, 166. 
Korner, the poet, 9, 108. 



LANDOR, W. S., not known by 
Goethe, 187, 188 ; epigiam on 
himself, 188. 
Leipzig, Goethe at, 6-8. 
Lenz, 317. 



452 



INDEX. 



Lessing, 26. 

Levezow, Fr'aulein von, 352. 

Lewes, G. H., biographer of Goethe, 352 ; 

quoted, 265, 348, 351, 352, 413. 
Liberal Ideas in Germany, Will-o'-the- 

Wisps in Das M'archen, 138, 140, 142, 

143. 

Lili (Schonemann), xii, 51, 121, 348, 350. 

Lili's Menagerie, 348. 

Loeper, quoted, 313, 314, 324. 

Love in the English Poets, 167 ; in 
Goethe's experience, 11, 167,180, 240- 
243, 348 seq. ; in the Elective Affin- 
ities, 280-282; infinite character of, 
281 ; in Faust, 411, 414, 418. 

Lynceus, 126. 



MACARIA in Wilhelm Meister, 47, 
238, 356, 359. 
Macbeth, 27. 

Macrocosm, in Faust, 387. 

Marchen, Das, Dr. Hedge's essay on, 

135-156 ; his introduction, 135-138 ; 

printed in Die Horen (1795), 135 ; 

a riddle, 135 ; Carlyle and Baumgart 

the chief expositors of, 135, 136; 

shows the patriotism of Goethe, 137, 

138 ; expounded and commented on 

by Dr. Hedge, 139-156. 
Margaret, in Faust, 48, 93, 94, 112, 224, 

354-356, 400-420. 
Mariana, 237, 353. 
Marianus, Doctor, 220, 443. 
Marlowe, Christopher, his Dr. Faustus, 

164, 184, 185, 316. 
Marriage, in the Elective Affinities, 282 ; 

of Goethe, 351, 363. 
Marvell, Andrew, the poet, 163. 
Meissner, quoted, 185. 
Meister, Wilhelm, viii, 107, 112, 163, 

237, 253, 295, 345, 346, 353, 357, 

378 ; quoted, 95, 201, 287, 288 ; child 

life in, 295-307 ; completion of, 341, 

342. 

Menzel, quoted, 137. 

Mephistopheles, his modern character, 
111 ; Webster an American Mephis- 
topheles, 174 ; his paper money, 244 ; 
genesis of, 337, 338; his spirit of 
negation, 392; his part in the Mar- 



garet episode, 411, 415, 417, 419, 421 ; 
his journey with Faust, 417-423; his 
true character, 423 ; his conduct in 
the Second Part, 426, 431, 435, 440. 

Metaphysics, of Goethe, 113 ; of Schil- 
ler, 166. 

Microcosm, in Faust, 394. 

Mignon, 224, 237 , 301, 303-307, 357, 
358 ; her death-song quoted, 125, 126 ; 
her father, 302. 

Milton, compared with Goethe, 110; 
little read by Goethe, 185 ; discussed 
by Goethe, 185-187; compared with 
Byron, 187. 

Mittler in Elective Affinities, 266, 267, 
277-279. 

Modern Women, cited, 353. 

Mothers, The, in Goethe's Faust, 245- 
247, 347, 433, 434. 

Motivation, in the drama, 190, 191, 
193, 194. 

Muse, The, 171. 

Music, power of, 306, 307. 



"VTANNY, in Elective Affinities, 270. 
-Li Napoleon on Goethe, 108. 
Naturliche Tochter, 238 ; quoted, 239. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 114, 165. 
Novel, Analysis of the, 251-254. 



OESER, Goethe's letter to, 6, 7. 
Offenbach, quoted, 349. 
Ophelia, in Hamlet, 112, 234. 
Oriental literature, tasted by Goethe, 

165. 
Orpheus, 373. 
Othello, 177, 183. 

Ottilie, in Elective Affinities, 122, 234- 
236, 262-266, 267-271, 273-279, 285- 
286, 304. 

Ovid, 180. 



?AGANISM of Goethe, 96-99. 
Pantheism : lectures on, at the 
Concord School of Philosophy, in 
1855, xxiii ; explained by C. E. Plump- 
tre, 25 ; of Goethe, 121, 413 ; of Faust, 
388. 



INDEX. 



453 



Paradise, of Dante, 110, 377. 
Parker, Theodore, quoted, 231. 
Partridge, W. 0., essay on Goethe's 

plays, xxiii, 189-217. 
Pater iEstaticus, 441 ; Pater Profundus, 

442 ; Pater Seraphicus (St. Francis), 

442 ; with Doctor Marianus, 443. 
Philina, 123, 224, 237, 353. 
Philosophy, of Descartes, 100 ; of Kant, 

390; of Schiller, 109, 166. 
Pitt, William, (Lord Chatham,) and his 

son, 167. 

Plato compared with Goethe, 161; 
quoted, 293; his ideas, 433. 

Playwright, Goethe as, 189; the suc- 
cessful, 189, 190. 

Plutarch and Plato, 433. 

Plutus, in Faust, 430. 

Polarity in nature, 230. 

Polycrates, the ring of, 162. 

Prometheus, of ^schylus, 82, 92; of 
Goethe, 78, 81, 88-92. 

Prooemion, quoted, 26. 

Purgatory, of Dante, 110, 377. 



RACINE, mentioned, 159, 434. 
Religion : of early races , 68-71 ; 
of Goethe, 292 , 293, 413, 414, 445. 
Riese, Johann Jacob, letter to, from 

Goethe, 30, 32. 
Robbers, Schiller's, 112, 160. 
Robinson, H. Crabbe, quoted, 185-187 ; 

and Goethe, 185. 
Roman "Elegies of Goethe, 180, 351. 
Rome, Goethe visits, 183. 
Rosenkranz, his criticism on the Elec- 
tive Affinities, 285 ; quoted, 287. 
Roussean's Heloise, 357; his Emile, and 
Contrat Social, 381; his prose, 10, 383. 



SAMSON AGONISTES, (Milton's, 
181, 185, 186, 187. 
Sanborn, P. B. , essay on Goethe, xxiii, 
157-188; quotes Alcott, 172-176; 
Basse, 179; Donne, 167; Emerson, 
170, 172 ; Frederic the Great, 158, 
166 ; Thoreau, 168. 
Sata,n of Milton, 111 ; of Goethe, 173. 
Schelling and Faust, 325, 326. 



Schiller (the poet), contrasted with 

Goethe, 107, 108, 109, 111, 118, 123, 

124, 128-134 ; remark to Goethe, 113 ; 

his virtues and vices, 118, 121, 180 ; 

and Hume, 133; and Frederic the 

Great, 160. 
Schonborn, letter to, from Goethe, 33. 
School of Philosophy, Concord, Mass., 

v. ; list of lectures and lecturers at, in 

1885, xxii-xxiii ; in 1886, xxiv. 
Science, the Old Man with the Lamp in 

Das M'archen,_138, 155-147, 152-155. 
Scientific investigations of Goethe, 46, 

60, 62, 351. 
Scott, Sir Walter, translates Gotz von 

Berlichingen, in 1799, 168, 204. 
Self-Culture denned, 37-40. 
Sessenheim, Goethe at, 2, 13. 
Sex in nature, 230-232 ; in Goethe, 247, 

248. 

Shakespeare, William, read by Goethe, 
120, 130, 192, 202; compared with 
Goethe, 44, 48, 112, 161, 177, 368, 378 ; 
mentioned by Goethe, 112 ; quoted, 
129, 150, 376 : described by Ben Jon- 
son, 177 ; eulogized by Basse, 179. 

Sherman, Caroline K., essay on Goethe, 
xxiii, 290-312 ; mentioned, 285. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 163, 178. 

Snider, D. J., essay on Faust, xxiii, 
313-344 ; his exposition of the legend 
of Faust, 184. 

Solger criticises the Elective Affinities, 
259, 267, 268, 269, 285. 

Soret, quoted, 256. 

Spinoza, read by Goethe, 24 ; his Ethics, 

24-36 ; his pantheism, 121. 
Sterling, John, quoted, 116. 
Stilling, Jung, quoted, 120. 
Strassburg, Goethe at, 8, 180. 



Hp ANT ALUS, 181. 

X Tasso, of Goethe, viii, 188, 200, 
236 ; analyzed by Mr. Partridge, 211- 
213. 

Taylor, Bayard, his translation of Faust 

quoted, 218. 
Tell, William, Schiller's, 112. 
Tennyson, his " Higher Pantheism," 

25; quoted, 241. 



454 INDEX. 



Thackeray, W. M., his women, 352. 

Theresa, 224. 

Thoreau, Henry D., 163. 

Titanism of Goethe, 68-106, 338, 339; 

the term explained, 68, 69, 76. 
Titans, the, 69, 182. 

YENERATION, in education, 300. 
Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith's, 
read by Goethe, 168. 
Virgil, mentioned, 159, 160. 
Voltaire, 10, 159. 
Vulpius, Christiane, 350, 351. 



WAGNER, in Faust, 359, 395, 
398. 

Wallenstein, 113. 

Webster, Daniel, 118, 133, 174. 



Weimar, Goethe at, 185; archives at, 
vi-xiv. 

Werther, Sorrows of, 27-29, 121, 159, 

172; quoted, 29. 
White, Prof. H. S., his essay on Goethe 

xxii, 1-36. 
Wieland, (the poet,) 7. 
Woman, treated by Goethe, 49-52,166, 

180, 218-250, 345-367; satirists of, 

252. 

Wordsworth, William, 119, 163, 178; 
quoted, 223. 



OUTH of Goethe, 1-36, 291. 



ZELTER, Goethe to, 186, 187, 222, 
314. 



University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



